“That's so,” said Starlight, and then sat silent a few moments, drawing his fingers, rake fashion, through the dry grass in front of him, and evidently thinking hard.
“Flutters,” he said at last, “if you ran away I believe you'd find a home and somebody to care for you—we'd look out for you ourselves, Aunt Frances and I, till something turned up.”
“Would you, really?” and Flutters leaned very close to Starlight in his eagerness.
“Yes, I'm sure we would. Will you do it?”
“Yes, sir, I'll do it now,” and Flutters got straightway on to “all fours,” as if he deemed that the most silent and effective mode of escape, although the benches were hardly so low as to render it necessary for a boy of his size.
“But you'll be caught in a minute in those—fixings.” Starlight did not think there was enough of them to deserve the respectable name of clothes.
Flutters sat down in despair. “Then there's no use; I may as well give it up if I have to go back for anything.” Flutters stood in such fear of the manager that he felt sure he could read his very thoughts. He honestly meant that he would abandon the whole scheme rather than face Mr. Bradshaw with such a design in mind, and he looked down at his spangled slippers and bedraggled tights in most woe-begone fashion.