"Well! It was lucky for you I didn't jump on you instead of by you!" cried the girl, as she, also, sat down on the bank.
Peter shrank aside, as one who wards off a blow, and mumbled something which she made out to mean:
"I didn't do any harm. I didn't!"
His speech was thick and he lisped like a baby learning to talk, but his face brightened when she answered quickly:
"Of course you didn't. But why aren't you in there with all the others? You must come, in a minute, back with me. First, see here?"
With the friendliest of smiles she held aloft the monster cake she had judged would be the waif's proper share of the feast, choosing for him, as she would for herself, to have the dessert come before the bread and butter.
Peter's protruding eyes fastened upon the dainty and his mouth opened widely, and for a time, at least, he knew nothing beyond that cake. Breaking it into bits, Dorothy fed him. He did not offer to take the food in his own hands, he simply opened that cavernous mouth and received with a snap of his jaws the portions she dropped therein. The operation became fascinating to the girl and she marveled to see no movement of swallowing; only that automatic opening and closing, and the subsequent absorption of the cake.
She had not supposed he would consume the whole loaf at one meal. He did. The last morsel followed the first and still there was no sign of surfeit, and the girl sprang up, saying:
"Now I must go back to help those ladies wait on the table. Will you come?"
With some hesitation Peter Piper got to his feet, and now his gaze was riveted upon her face as closely as it had been upon the chocolate cake and almost as greedily. As if within her bonny smile and unshrinking friendliness he beheld something new and wonderfully beautiful. It was just as they stood up that somebody behind the wall called out: