mething about it,' she said. 'But I have never
heard you mention it since, Peterkin?'

'No,' said Peterkin, getting rather red.

'He has spoken of it a little to me,' said Clement; 'that's how I knew
it was in his mind. But Peterkin often doesn't say much about what he's
thinking a lot about. It's his way.'

'Yes,' said Peterkin, 'it's my way.'

'And have you been planning all these days to run off to see the parrot
again?' asked mamma. I wasn't quite sure if she was vexed or not, but
_I_ was; it seemed so queer, queer as Pete often was, for him not to
have confided in somebody.

But we were mistaken.

'No, no, truly, mamma,' he said, speaking in a much more determined way
now, and shaking his curly head. 'I didn't ever think of it till after
I'd got out of the calliage and I saw it was the corner of the big
square where the little houses are at one end, and then I only meant to
go for one minute. I thought it was nearly as quick that way, and I ran
fast. I never meant to flighten you, mamma,' he repeated again, his
voice growing plaintive. 'I wasn't planning it a bit all these days. I
only kept thinking it _were_ like the blue-bird.'

The last sentence was almost in a whisper; it was only a sort of honesty
that forced him to say it. As far as Clement and I were concerned, he
needn't have said it.

'I knew he'd got some fairy-story rubbish in his head,' I muttered, but
I don't think Peterkin heard me, though papa and mamma did; for I saw
them glance at each other, and papa said something under his breath, of
which I only caught the words 'getting too fanciful,' and 'schoolboy,'
which made mamma look rather unhappy again.

'I don't yet understand how old Mrs. Wylie got mixed up in it all,' said
papa.

'She lives next door to the parrot,' said Clem, and we couldn't help
smiling at the funny way he said it.

'And she saw me when she was coming back from the post, and she was very
kind,' Peterkin went on, taking up the story again, as the smile had
encouraged him. 'She 'avited me to go in, up to her drawing-room, so
that I could hear him talking better. And he said lots of things.'

'Oh yes, by the bye,' I exclaimed, 'there was something about a little
girl, Mrs. Wylie said. What was it, Pete?'

But Peterkin shut up at this.

'I'll tell you the next time I go there. Mummy, you will let me go to
see that old lady again, won't you?' he begged. 'She was so kind, and I
only thought I'd been there five minutes.