"Bringing it back," sneered Graham. "Why should he steal it, and then bring it back?" The logic was irresistible, but Peggy was a girl who never allowed logic to stand in the way of her facts.
"I don't know. But I know he was bringing it back. They were way up the alley when we heard them first, and they'd got to the gate and had it open, when you jumped at them."
The lids of the small prisoner fluttered, lifted, and dropped again, but in that instant a glance had sped straight as an arrow to Peggy. The eyes had uttered an appeal which the stubborn lips would not speak.
"You were bringing it back, weren't you?" Peggy exclaimed. "Tell us about it."
The boy squirmed, cast another furtive glance at Peggy, and seemed to find encouragement in her air of sympathetic attention. His mouth opened; and a hoarse voice exploded two words, as if they had been cannon crackers.
"Skinny said--" Then, apparently overcome by the effect of his beginning, he came to a full stop.
"That's right," Peggy encouraged him. "What was it Skinny said?"
Another period of squirming, as if the small figure were a corkscrew set to remove some obstruction to the free flow of speech, and as if a cork had really popped out, the explanation bubbled forth at last.
"Skinny said you was gettin' money for the empty stockin' kids, an' so--"
"And so you brought it back," exclaimed Peggy, including the entire company in her triumphant glance.