‘There, that’ll settle you,’ he said. He pushed poor Phil before him along the path, and stooped down to brush from his immaculate stockinged legs the marks of this ignoble conflict.
Carrie, being admonished by Patty to rejoin her companion, advanced rather timidly towards him. Phil was quite white now, and shook all over.
‘I think I shall go home now, Peter,’ he said in a very humble little voice; ‘I feel most terribly tired—will you take me home?’
‘Yes, Master Phil,’ said Peter, quite pleasantly, and with adieux to Carrie and Patty, they walked off together up the Mall.
‘Lor’! what a life Mr. Peter do lead with the boy!’ said Patty occultly. Carrie was silent, and watched the retreating forms of the little Phil and the mighty Peter till they became merged in the throng.
As they came to see more and more of each other the children’s intercourse assumed a definite character, which one often notices in childish friendships. Phil, as the elder and more original-minded of the two, assumed as it were command, led the conversation, and Carrie, deeply admiring his powers of mind, and quite content to be commanded, took all her ideas from him. Phil indeed was vastly entertaining to her after the pre-occupied silence of Patty, but sometimes his views rather startled her childish fancy.
They had gone far afield one fine day in late autumn—even to the Park—a world of delight to the children, and Peter and Patty, having seated themselves under one of the trees, Phil and Carrie followed the example of their elders and sat down also.
‘I wish God would come,’ said Phil suddenly, gazing up through the branches above him. ‘Do you not, Carrie?’
‘No—o,’ admitted the feeble-minded Carrie.
‘I do, and I shall tell you why. Peter took me to his meeting-house, where they pray without a book, and they prayed, “Rend the heavens and come down.” Well, since that I’ve lain down whenever I’ve got a chance and looked up into the sky. ’Tis too bright to look into nicely most days, but if God were to make a rent in that blue bit we see’ (he pointed up as he spoke, and Carrie glanced upwards, half expecting to see some Beatific Vision), ‘if He were to make a hole to come down through, you know, we should see something brighter than that behind, I believe. And then He’d come down—oh, like that!’ Phil brought his hands together with a crack that made Carrie jump.