“I almost hope he won’t come,” said Harry, “’cause if he did, I should have to move on somewhere.”
“Then you don’t care to go?” questioned Mrs. Dobson, with a little breath of eagerness. “I was afraid, when there was so much talk of Frank’s going off to the grand school, that my boy would grow discontented.”
“Not a bit of it, grandma. I got grandeur enough at the circus to last me a lifetime. I’m sorry sometimes, though, because I see so much make-believe in ’most everything. I wonder if it is wicked to hate make-believe as much as I do.”
“Dear me! Harry Cornwall, what can I do if you begin to hate me?” exclaimed Mrs. Dobson, thrusting the knitting-needles into parallel lines through the sock and looking with severity at him.
“No danger of that, grandma. You are as transparent as the water in this well—and you know it is relied on always for pure clearness. I must have a drink, and while we are at tea I’ve something to tell you.”
At the table Harry related nearly everything that had happened at the Point during his little visit there, together with his thoughts and fears of what might happen.
“Dear, dear me!” sighed Mrs. Dobson. “What can we—you and I, Harry—do for our friends?”
“We can wait and watch for a chance, grandma. It won’t do to let on what we’ve found out. When everybody knows about the trouble, then we can seem to know it, too.”
“I thought you hated make-believe, my laddie.”
“That isn’t what I mean by making believe. I found Kate sobbing away and telling her grief to her pony, and I more than half think that Neptune understood every word she said, too.” Then suddenly turning his bright face upon Mrs. Dobson, the boy said: “I know one way to help them, a little.”