Each with a cooky in hand and an extra one in Phil’s pocket, Susan escorted her new friend down Featherbed Lane in the hope that Grandfather would invite them into the office.
He was writing busily, but when Susan and Phil, clinging to the window-sill, all but pressed their noses against the pane, Grandfather put down his pen and motioned them to come in.
“How do you do, sir,” said Grandfather as Phil shook hands in true manly fashion. “So you are my next-door neighbor. I hope we shall be good friends.”
“Oh, he will, Grandfather,” said Susan, speaking up for her new acquaintance, who, standing speechless, allowed his gaze to travel from the high boots up to the quizzical brown eyes looking so pleasantly down upon him.
“Well, neighbor, we shall have to fatten you up a little, I’m thinking,” remarked Grandfather heartily, observing thin little Phil in his turn.
“Yes,” agreed Phil, finding his tongue at last and taking a nibble of his cooky as if to begin the fattening process at once.
“I mean to eat and grow fat. My mother wants me to; she said so. My father calls me Spindle Shanks,” he added, as if rather proud of his new name.
“Is that so?” said Grandfather with interest. “Now I shouldn’t have thought of calling you that. But I might have called you ‘Pint o’ Peanuts’ if any one had asked me.”
Phil and Susan went off into a fit of laughter at this funny name, and when they recovered Grandfather remarked gravely:
“The best thing to do in a case like this is to build up an appetite. Susan, you go with Philip up to his house and ask his mother if she will let him take a little drive with Parson Drew and you and me over to Green Valley. Be sure to tell her it’s to work up an appetite. Then cut across and tell Grandmother we are going to the Green Valley Court-House and that we shall be home by five o’clock.”