try to go home. Now
it was daylight, and Peter knew it would not be safe to put his nose
outside.

Peter was worried, so worried that he couldn't go to sleep as he
usually does in the daytime. So he sat hidden in the old wall and
waited and watched. By and by he saw Farmer Brown and Farmer Brown's
boy come out into the orchard. Right away they saw the mischief
which Peter had done, and he could tell by the sound of their voices
that they were very, very angry. They went away, but before long
they were back again, and all day long Peter watched them work
putting something around each of the young peach-trees. Peter grew
so curious that he forgot all about his troubles and how far away
from home he was. He could hardly wait for night to come so that he
might see what they had been doing.

Just as jolly, round, red Mr. Sun started to go to bed behind the
Purple Hills, Farmer Brown and his boy started back to the house.
Farmer Brown was smiling now.

"I guess that will fix him!" he said.

"Now what does he mean by that?" thought Peter. "Whom will it fix?
Can it be me? I don't need any fixing."

He waited just as long as he could. When all was still, and the
moonlight had begun to make shadows of the trees on the snow, Peter
very cautiously crept out of his hiding-place. Bowser the Hound was
nowhere in sight, and everything was as quiet and peaceful as it had
been when he first came into the orchard the night before. Peter had
fully made up his mind to go straight home as fast as his long legs
would take him, but his dreadful curiosity insisted that first he
must find out what Farmer Brown and his boy had been doing to the
young peach trees.

So Peter hurried over to the nearest tree. All around the trunk of
the tree, from the ground clear up higher than Peter could reach,
was wrapped wire netting. Peter couldn't get so much as a nibble of
the delicious bark. He hadn't intended to take any, for he had meant
to go right straight home, but now that he couldn't get any, he
wanted some more than ever,--just a bite. Peter looked around.
Everything was quiet. He would try the next tree, and then he would
go home.

But the next tree was wrapped with wire. Peter hesitated, looked
around, turned to go home, thought of how good that bark had tasted
the night before, hesitated again, and then hurried over to the
third tree. It was protected just like the others. Then Peter forgot
all about going home. He wanted some of that