"'Who was responsible for this?'"
"'Clarence Prissler, over at the hospital,' I told her; and then she thanked me for you, and insisted upon my taking a glass of her new jelly for you, and she's coming around to see you in a day or two, and—"
The sick boy lifted a protesting hand. Bunny saw two faint pink spots on his cheeks. "But I wasn't really responsible for what you did," he declared.
"Nonsense! Of course, you were. I was your proxy, and you had to stand or fall by my actions. And I might have done something else—something for which I should have been very sorry afterwards—if I had been acting for myself only."
Prissler pondered this for a long minute. Then he looked up at his caller quizzically. "Did I do anything else last night?" he asked with genuine interest.
"Lots of things. You wheeled back to its old corner Pop Gan's peanut roaster, after some fellows—young kids who didn't know any better—had run away with it; and you enjoyed racing it back to its old stand as much as you could if you'd been running away with it. Pop's put a sack of goobers aside for you, against the day when you'll come around personally to call for it. And you took Mrs. Ginty's baby carriage, that had strayed downtown, and put a sack of potatoes in it, and wheeled that back home, too. And you stopped one youngster who was forgetting himself, and lectured him—oh, mightily eloquently—till he saw things a little clearer, and insisted upon joining your crowd. And you happened to be of service to your old landlady."
"Mrs. Stone?" The pink spots in Prissler's cheeks vanished.
"Yes, Mrs. Stone. Seems your trunk had been put out of your room, and you stopped to ask about it. She didn't quite understand that you'd be home shortly and make up the work you do to pay the rent of your room. There were lots of chores undone, and you got the crowd to pitch in and carry the wood to the shed, and cut some kindling, and clean up the yard; and then, over your protest, mind you, the fellows in your crowd agreed to come around daily and do the work you'd been doing, until you were able to do it yourself. You said—"
"The Boy Scouts are going to do it, you mean."
"Well-l, yes. You said that would make you get well in a hurry, and Mrs. Stone said she hadn't realized how matters stood with you, and it didn't matter if the fellows pitched in as your work proxies or not. But they're going to, just the same."