ing and I had to lean against the end of the
toboggan-slide until I could catch my breath.

He called out, "Hello, youngsters!" as quietly as though he had seen
us all the day before. I said "Peter!" in a strangled sort of whisper,
and wondered what made my knees wabble as I stood staring at him as
though he had been a ghost.

But Peter was no ghost. He was there before me, in the body, still
smoking his foolish little pipe, wearing the familiar old coonskin cap
and coat that looked as though the moths had made many a Roman holiday
of their generously deforested pelt. He took the pipe out of his mouth
as he stepped over to me, and pulled off his heavy old gauntlet before
he shook hands.

"Peter!" I repeated in my ridiculous small whisper.

He didn't speak. But he smiled, a bit wistfully, as he stared down at
me. And for just a moment, I think, an odd look of longing came into
his searching honest eyes which studied my face as though he were
counting every freckle and line and eyelash there. He continued to
X-ray me with that hungry stare of his until I took my hand away and
could feel the blood surging back to my face.

"It's a long time," he said as he puffed hard on his pipe, apparently
to keep it from going out. The sound of his voice sent a little
thrill through my body. I felt as rattle-headed as a rabbit, and was
glad when Dinkie and Poppsy captured him by each knee and hung on like
catamounts.

"Where did you come from?" I finally asked, trying in vain to be as
collected as Peter himself.

Then he told me. He told me as nonchalantly as though he were giving
me a piece of news of no particular interest. He had rather a
difficult book to finish up, and he concluded the quietness of Alabama
Ranch would suit him to a T. And when spring came he wanted to have a
look about for a nest of the whooping crane. It has been rather a
rarity, for some sixteen or seventeen years, this whooping crane, and
the American Museum was offering a mighty handsome prize for a
specimen. Then he was compelled to give his attention to Dinkie and
Poppsy, and tried the slide a couple of times, and announced that our
coaster was better than the chariot of Icarius. And by this time I had
recovered my wits and my composure and got some of the snow off my
Mackinaw.

"Have I changed?" I asked Peter as he turned to study my face for the
second time.

"To me," he said as he brushed the snow from his gauntlets, "you are
always adorable!"