any real trouble about
Peterkin, it wouldn't be at all a good time to tease each other. I don't
think Elf--that's Elvira's pet name--had understood about him being
lost. Indeed, I don't think I had quite taken it in myself, till I saw
how grave the two eldest ones were looking.

'Clem,' I said, 'do you think there can really be anything the matter?'

Clement is the eldest of us all, and he is always the one we go to first
if we are in any trouble. But he is sometimes rather slow; he is not as
quick and clever as Blanche, and she often puts him down at first,
though she generally comes round to his way in the end. She answered for
him now, though I hadn't spoken to her.

'How can there not be something the matter?' she said sharply. 'If
Peterkin has been half-an-hour or an hour, perhaps, wandering about the
streets, it shows he has at least lost his way, and who knows where he's
got to. I wish you wouldn't ask such silly questions, Giles.'

Then, all of a sudden, Elf burst out crying. It may have been partly
Blanche's sharp tone, which had startled her, and made her take more
notice of it all.

'Oh, Clem, Clem,' she wailed, 'could he have been stolened?'

'No, no, darling,' said Clement, dabbing her face with his
pocket-handkerchief. 'There are kind policemen in the streets, you know.
They wouldn't let a little boy like Peterkin be stolen.'

'But they does take little boys to pison,' said Elf. 'I've see'd them.
It's 'cos of that I'm frightened of them for Peterkin.'

That was not quite true. She had never thought of policemen till,
unluckily, Clem spoke of them in his wish to comfort her. She did not
mean to say what was not true, of course, but there never was such a
child as Elf for arguing, even then when she was only four years old.
Indeed, she's not half as bad now that she is eight, twice as old, and I
often tell her so. Perhaps that evening it wasn't a bad thing, for the
talking about policemen stopped her crying, which was even worse than
her arguing, once she started a good roar.

'It's just because of that, that I'm so frightened about dear sweet
little Peterkin,' she repeated.

'Rubbish, Elf,' I began, but Clem looked at me and I stopped.

'You needn't be frightened that Peterkin will be taken to prison,
Elfie,' he said in his kind, rather slow way. 'It's only naughty little
boys that the policemen take to prison, and Peterkin isn't naughty,' and
then he wiped Elf's eyes again, and she forgot to go