"I don't know why I should bother to take him home," Tom muttered, as he stood watching him; "and I don't suppose he would follow me. Here, Bounce, Bounce!"
But Bounce took no notice. He continued digging, now and again uttering a whine of excitement, and pausing occasionally to sniff into the hole to assure himself the rabbit was still there. Tom searched his pockets and found a piece of string; he looked at it with a frown.
"I could lead him by this," he thought, "but I won't—no, I won't! I won't interfere with him, and I hope—yes, I hope he will stay here for hours, so that his master will think he is lost! I will mind my own business! I will let the dog go! Dig away, Bounce, to your heart's content!"
He turned on his heel and walked off. Half an hour later he arrived at home. As he shut the front door behind him, Nellie came downstairs. "Oh, why did you go away?" she cried. "I'm so sorry you did! Listen! You mustn't be angry with Peter Perry any longer! He didn't see you—he couldn't see you, because—oh, isn't it sad?— because he is blind—quite, quite blind!"
[CHAPTER V]
LOST—AND FOUND AGAIN
PETER PERRY was blind! Tom, startled and immeasurably shocked, could scarcely credit it till his mother had added her testimony to Nellie's, and explained that the afflicted boy had been blind from birth.
"Isn't it dreadfully sad?" said Nellie, surprised at the silence with which her brother had taken the information she had given him, and little guessing the tumult of emotions which were stirring in his breast.
"Yes," he assented, adding, "Oh, I wish I'd known this before!"
"I didn't tell him you believed he had kept on cutting you," Nellie remarked; "I thought there was no need to do that. Everything's explained now that we know he's blind."