nged a good bit in little parts of them, but still he
stuck to the general idea, and I helped him to polish it up. It was
really more interesting than any of his fairy stories, for he managed to
make both himself and me feel as if we were going to be _in_ one of them
ourselves.

So I will skip over that week, and go on to the next. By that time we
knew that Mrs. Wylie was in London, because mamma said something one day
about having had a letter from her. Nothing to do with the little girl,
as far as we knew; I think it was only about somebody who wanted a
servant, or something stupid like that.

It got on to the Monday of the next week _again_, and by that time Pete
had got a sort of start of his plans. He had got leave to come to meet
me at the corner of Lindsay Square, once or twice in the last few days.
I used to get there about a quarter or twenty minutes to one. We were
supposed to leave school not later than a quarter past twelve, but you
know how fellows get fooling about coming out of a day-school, so,
though it was really quite near, I was often later.

Mamma was pleased for Peterkin to want to come to meet me. She was not
at all coddling or stupid like that about us boys, though her being in
such a fuss that evening Pete was lost may have seemed so. And she was
always awfully glad for us to be fond of each other. She used to say she
hoped we'd grow up 'friends' as well as brothers, which always reminded
me of the verse about it in the Bible about 'sticking closer than a
brother.' And I like to think that dear little mummy's hopes will come
true for her sons.

It wasn't exactly a fit of affection for me, of course, that made Pete
want to get into the way of coming to meet me. Still, we _were_ very
good friends; especially good friends just then, as you know.

So that Monday, which luckily happened to be a very nice bright day, he
had no difficulty in getting leave for it again. I had promised him to
hurry over getting off from school, so we counted on having a good bit
of time to spend in looking at the parrot and talking to him, and in
'spying the land' generally, including the invisible princess, if we got
a chance, without risking coming in too late for our dinner. We had
taken care never to be late, up till now, for fear of Peterkin's coming
to meet me being put a stop to; but we hadn't pretended that we would
come straight home, and once or twice we had done a little shopping
together, and more than o