"Take care what you say!" shouted Tom, turning crimson. "You're a cheeky youngster! As for your father, he's only a common Tommy!"
"A common Tommy!" echoed Bob, adding quickly, "Anyway, he's a brave man, and he wouldn't hurt a poor dog like you did."
"If you're not careful what you say, I'll give you something you won't like!" Tom threatened.
"You'd better not!" Bob retorted.
And Tom decided that he had better not, for after looking at Bob uncertainly for a minute, he muttered something under his breath, turned sharply on his heel, and moved on.
"I don't think he'll dare do any harm to Stray again," thought Bob; "he saw I meant it when I said I'd go to the police about him."
Mrs. Mead had forgiven Bob by this time for the loss of her apples, and was using him as an errand boy out of school hours as she had done before. Sometimes when he went to bed he was so weary and his limbs ached so much that he could not; get to sleep till the early hours of the morning, and this began to tell on his health. Then, at the end of October, he caught a bad cold on the chest and had to be in bed several days.
During those days it was Mrs. Winter who nursed him. Lizzie brought him his food, and Mrs. Mead came to see how he was night and morning; but it was his kind old neighbour who poulticed his chest, and gave him his cough mixture regularly, and sat with him whilst his little brother was at school, telling him stories, or talking to him of her young days and the children she had had in her care.
"I loved them all," she said, as she was keeping him company one afternoon, "but not one quite so well as Miss Peggy. The little dear was an orphan, just three years old, when I went to be her nurse, and her aunt, who was her guardian, left her entirely to my care. It was I who taught her to love Jesus—to know Him as her Saviour Who died for her. Ah, she loved Him and trusted Him with all her heart, did Miss Peggy! 'I feel He's near me, Nana!' she used to say."
"It's a great thing to feel that," Bob remarked thoughtfully, adding, "Jackie is not half so afraid of the dark now you've made him understand that Jesus is there."