Peterkin

by Mrs. Molesworth

'You'll be late, Master Giles, and Master Peterkin, too,' she said. 'I really don't think you should talk so much on Sunday mornings.'

It wasn't that we had to be any earlier on Sundays than any other day, but that dressing in your best clothes takes so much longer somehow, and we had to have our hair very neat, and all like that, because we generally went down to the dining-room, while papa and mamma and Clement and Blanche were at breakfast, after we had had our own in the nursery.

There would be no good in trying to remember all our morning talks that week about Peterkin's plans. He did not get the least tired of them, and I didn't, for a wonder, get tired of listening to him, he was so very much in earnest.

He chopped and changed a good bit in little parts of them, but still he stuck to the general idea, and I helped him to polish it up. It was really more interesting than any of his fairy stories, for he managed to make both himself and me feel as if we were going to be in one of them ourselves.

So I will skip over that week, and go on to the next. By that time we knew that Mrs. Wylie was in London, because mamma said something one day about having had a letter from her. Nothing to do with the little girl, as far as we knew; I think it was only about somebody who wanted a servant, or something stupid like that.

It got on to the Monday of the next week again, and by that time Pete had got a sort of start of his plans. He had got leave to come to meet me at the corner of Lindsay Square, once or twice in the last few days. I used to get there about a quarter or twenty minutes to one. We were supposed to leave school not later than a quarter past twelve, but you know how fellows get fooling about coming out of a day-school, so, though it was really quite near, I was often later.

Mamma was pleased for Peterkin to want to come to meet me. She was not at all coddling or stupid like that about us boys, though her being in such a fuss that evening Pete was lost may have seemed so. And she was always awfully glad for us to be fond of each other. She used to say she hoped we'd grow up 'friends' as well as brothers, which always reminded me of the verse about it in the Bible about 'sticking closer than a brother.' And I like to think that dear little mummy's hopes will come true for her sons.

It wasn't exactly a fit of affection for me, of course, that made Pete want to get into the way of coming to meet me. Still, we were very good friends; especially good friends just then, as you know.

So that Monday, which luckily happened to be a very nice bright day, he had no difficulty in getting leave for it again. I had promised him to hurry over getting off from school, so we counted on having a good bit of time to spend in looking at the parrot and talking to him, and in 'spying the land' generally, including the invisible princess, if we got a chance, without risking coming in too late for our dinner. We had taken care never to be late, up till now, for fear of Peterkin's coming to meet me being put a stop to; but we hadn't pretended that we would come straight home, and once or twice we had done a little shopping together, and more than once we had spent several minutes in staring in at the flower-shop windows, settling what kind of flowers would be best, and in asking the prices of hers from a flower-woman who often sat near the corner of the square. She was very good-natured about it. We shouldn't have liked to go into a regular shop only to ask prices, so it was a good thing to know a little about them beforehand.

I remember all about that Monday morning particularly well. I did hurry off from school as fast as I could, though of course—I think it nearly always happens so—ever so many stupid little things turned up to keep me later than I often was.