"The monkey is dead." The words escaped her lips before she thought, but the frozen horror on the boy's face brought her to her senses, and she hastily cried, "But he was so sick and hurt! His back was just a mess of solid sores. It is better that he is dead!"
"Oh, but Petri keel me!"
"Sh! The teachers will hear you if you screech so loud. Come upstairs with me. Miss Curtis will know what to do. She won't let Petri get you. Don't be afraid, Jessup. I wouldn't hurt you for the world."
He did not understand half that she said, but the great brown eyes were filled with sympathy, and with the same instinct which had led the monkey to leap into her arms a few moments before, the ragamuffin laid his grimy fists into hers, and she led him up the winding stairs to the principal's office.
When the worthy lady had heard the queer story, she could only stare from one child to the other and gasp for breath. Peace was noted for finding all sorts of maimed birds or sick animals on her way to school, but never before had she appeared with a human being, and Miss Curtis almost doubted now that little Giuseppe was a real human. He looked so pitifully like a scarecrow. What could she do with him? It would be criminal to let the brutal organ-player get him again if the lad's story were true, and she did not doubt its truth after the waif had slipped back his ragged sleeves and showed great, ugly, purple welts across his naked arms.
"Poor little chap," she murmured. "Poor little chap!" As she gingerly touched the bony hands, she was seized with a happy inspiration, and bidding the children sit down till she returned, she entered a little inner office, and Peace heard her at the telephone. "Give me 9275."
There was a pause; then the child grew rigid with horror. The voice from the adjoining room was saying, "Is this the Humane Society?"
It was to the Humane Society that Saint John had intended telephoning, in order that they might come up and kill the poor monkey. Was Miss Curtis a murderer? Surely Giuseppe was not to be killed, too. Then why had she telephoned the Humane Society?
Tiptoeing across the floor to the Italian waif's chair, she clutched him by the hand, dragged him to his feet, and signalling him to be quiet, she stole cautiously from the room with him in tow. Down the long stairs they hurried, and out into the bright sunshine, though poor, frightened Giuseppe protested volubly in his own tongue and the little broken English which he knew, for once on the streets, he feared that the bold, bad Petri would find him and drag him away to dreadful punishments again. But the harder he protested, the faster Peace jerked him along, repeating over and over in her frantic efforts to make him understand, "Petri shan't get you, Jessup. But if we stay there the Human Society will, and that's just as bad. They killed Deacon Skinner's old horse in Parker, and Tim Shandy's lame cow, and were coming to finish Jocko when he died of his own self. You don't want to go the same way, do you?"
Poor Peace did not know the real mission of the Humane Society, or she would not have been so shocked at the idea of little Giuseppe's falling into their hands; but her fear had its effect upon the struggling urchin, and his feet fairly flew over the ground, as he tried to keep pace with his leader. When only half a block from the parsonage, Peace abruptly halted, and the boy's dark eyes looked into hers inquiringly, fearfully. What was the matter now? This was certainly a queer child at his side. Perhaps it would have been wiser had he stayed with the gentle-faced lady in the schoolhouse.