"So do I, Peter. I won't play 'hookey' again; but I'm not a-goin' to cry."
"I'll never go anywheres with you any more as long as I live, Horace Clifford!"
"Nobody wants you to, Pete Grant!"
Then they pushed on in dignified silence till Peter broke forth again with wailing sobs.
"I dread to get home! O, dear, I'll have to take it, I tell you. I guess you'd cry if you expected to be whipped."
Horace made no reply. He did not care about telling Peter that he too had a terrible dread of reaching home, for there was something a great deal worse than a whipping, and that was, a mother's sorrowful face.
"I shouldn't care if she'd whip me right hard," thought Horace; "but she'll talk to me about God and the Bible, and O, she'll look so white!"
"Peter, you go on ahead," said he aloud.
"What for?"
"O, I want to rest a minute with Pincher."