'Oh, I am so glad you're awake!'
'You've been staring me awake,' I said, very grumpily. 'I'd like to know who could go on sleeping with you wishing them awake?'
'I'm very sorry if you wanted to go on sleeping,' he replied meekly. He did not seem at all surprised at my saying he had wakened me. He used to understand rather queer things like that so quickly, though we counted him stupid in some ways.
'But as I am awake you can start talking,' I said, closing my eyes again, and preparing to listen.
Pete was quite ready to obey.
'Well,' he began, 'it was this way. Mamma didn't want me to be late for tea, so she stopped at the end of that big street—a little farther away than Lindsay Square, you know——'
'Yes, Meredith Place,' I grunted.
'And,' Pete went on, 'told me to run home. It's quite straight, if you keep to the front, of course.'
'And you did run straight home, didn't you?' I said teasingly.
'No,' he replied seriously, but not at all offended. 'When I got to the corner of the square I looked up it, and I remembered that it led to the funny little houses where Clem and I had seen the parrot. So, almost without settling it in my mind, I ran along that side of the square till I came to Rock Terrace. I ran very fast——'