“I might go farther than that,” said Peter reflectively; “adoration, worship, might be nearer my sentiments. But how, may I ask, did you find your way down here?”
Dickie smiled, an elfin smile of pure wickedness.
“I ran away from nurse. She’s got the baby in the perambulator. It’s a very young baby, and perambulators are dull things—they can’t get over stiles, or go across fields or even the tiniest kind of streams, not even streams with a plank across: the wheels are always too wide. And nurse doesn’t understand anything, not why fields are nicer than roads, and why it’s pleasant to stand still in a wood and listen, and why some walks are nice ways and some walks dull and horrid. She thinks everything’s just all the same. And I can’t explain things to her, things I know in my inside. So I just ran away and came to see you.”
“You did, did you?” responded Peter. And back his mind swung to the memory of another small boy, one of whom the Lady Anne had written to him, and of another non-understanding grown-up. Oh, those Olympians who, from their heights of common sense, cannot stoop to the level of childhood!—for stooping they assuredly would term it, though Peter took another view of the respective levels. Yet, whatever the levels, the fact undoubtedly remained the same: their utter and entire incapacity of seeing eye to eye, of hearing ear to ear, of feeling heart to heart with a child. And, mused Peter, it was unquestionable whose was the greater loss. And then he roused himself.
“But how about my duty?” he demanded. “Oughtn’t I to bind you, fetter you, and carry you back a prisoner to that perambulator, that very young baby, and that non-comprehending nurse?”
Dickie looked at him.
“You won’t,” he said comfortably; “besides, I want to talk.”
“Humph!” said Peter, again smiling lazily; “well, talk. I shall doubtless make a good audience, [Pg 187]since the hearing of speech is now something of a novelty to me.”
Dickie looked at him again. The speech was not entirely clear, but the encouragement to talk was.
With a deep breath he began: “Nurse says this cottage is a bad place, and you’re friends with the Devil. Is he really an unpleasant person? You don’t look’s if you’d be friends with him if he were.”