"Perhaps I will. What else did he talk about?"
"Oh, about dogs, and motor-cars, and—and I told him I'd never ridden in a motor-car in my life, and I believe he's going to ask his aunt to take me for a drive in hers one day—he said he would. Then he told me about himself. He has no sisters or brothers, and his mother's dead, but he has a father who's coming to fetch him at the end of September. He says it's dull visiting at Halcyon Villa, though his aunt is very, very kind to him, but she's so afraid some harm will come to him that she will hardly let him out of her sight. So it was just as I guessed, you see, though of course I didn't think he was blind."
Tom made no response to this, nor did he ask any more questions. The next morning, after going with his father to the bank, he decided he would take Tim for a stroll past Halcyon Villa, and then, if he should happen to see Peter Perry, he would speak to him. "Bounce ought to have had a good thrashing when he got home last night," he reflected, as, on nearing Miss Perry's pretty, creeper-covered house, he motioned Tim to keep to heel, "but I don't expect he did. If I see his master I shall tell him where he went and what he was doing."
But he did not carry out this intention. Peter Perry was in the garden, as it happened; he heard Tom's footsteps halt at the gate, and quickly made his way to it. "Who is it?" he inquired.
"Tom Burford," was the response.
Peter promptly opened the gate and asked Tom to come in; but the invitation was politely declined. "I'm afraid you're still angry with me!" Peter remarked, regretfully.
"No, indeed I'm not," Tom assured him. "But I won't come in, thank you, for I've Tim with me, and he'd be sure to fight with Bounce."
"Bounce is not here," Peter said, sadly; "we don't know what has become of him. He's lost."
"Lost?" gasped Tom.
"Yes, lost," Peter replied. "He was left chained to his kennel in the yard yesterday afternoon, so that he shouldn't follow Aunt Harriet and me," he quickly explained, "and somehow he managed to get his head out of his collar—it couldn't have been tight enough, I suppose— and went off by himself. He hasn't come back yet, and I'm afraid that either he's been stolen or trapped—"