Nancy nodded mysteriously. "Honest to goodness—at three bells!"
She watched the children scamper away, then turned eyes dark with indignation to Peter Hyde.
"How can anyone be cruel to children?" she cried. "How can anyone hurt them?"
Peter did not know what she was talking about, but he agreed with all his heart.
"Kids—and dogs and cats and—little things," he added. "I shot a rabbit once when I was fifteen, and when I went up to get it, it was still breathing, and looked so pitiful and small—I couldn't help but feel that it hadn't had a chance 'gainst a fellow like me. I had to kill it then. That was enough for me! I haven't shot—any sort of living things—like that—since!"
His step shortened to Nancy's and together they turned their backs upon Jeremiah's cheering audience and walked slowly homeward. Her mind concerned with the children, Nancy told Peter all that had happened—of finding Nonie in the orchard, of the child's "pretend" games, of her call upon Liz. Then she concluded with an account of the incident of the morning mimicing, comically, Mrs. Eaton's outraged manner.
"As if it would hurt her or her Archie or—or anyone else in this old place to make two youngsters happy," Nancy exclaimed, disgustedly. "I'm going to do everything I can, while I'm at Happy House, to make up to them," she finished.
Peter assured her that he wanted to help. How much the desire was inspired by sympathy for Nonie and Davy or by the winning picture Nancy made, her rebel strands of red-brown hair blowing across her flushed cheeks, no one could say. And when at the gate of Happy House they separated, Peter promising to be on hand at the Cove at four o'clock, Nancy watched him swing down the road with a pleasant sense of comradeship.