And here it is necessary to introduce another character to the reader, one of whom there has already been a momentary glimpse, but who now comes forward to play his speaking part. He is indeed a small character, a young character, and might, at first appearance, seem insignificant, yet the part he has to play in Peter’s drama is fraught with much consequence. A very small pebble dropped into a pool can send out wide circles, so this small figure dropped into Peter’s life was to play a far-reaching and important part.  
The little figure first made its appearance by peeping through the hedge in front of Peter’s cottage. It was a boy-child, aged perhaps some seven summers, and was clad in short blue serge knickerbockers and a blue jersey.
 
Peter himself was sitting by the door piping. The small figure thought his presence unobserved, but Peter’s blue eyes were watching him keenly. He sat very still as he piped, and the music was calling the child to him.
 
It was a friendly, seductive little tune that he was playing, and Peter saw the child move towards the gate. He did not look at him now, fearing by the slightest sign or movement to startle him. Suddenly Peter felt a light touch on his knee, gentle as the touch of a small bird’s wing. The child had stolen up the path and was beside him.
 
Peter’s heart leapt with pleasure. It was as if he had drawn a little wild woodland creature near him. He still did not move, but he let the music die away.
 
“I like that,” said the small boy, gazing at him with solemn eyes, “and I like you.”
 
Peter’s eyes wrinkled at the comers in sheer delight. It was a good many years since a child’s voice had spoken to him, since a child’s hand had been laid upon his knee.
 
“Oh,” said Peter, smiling with pretended laziness, “do you? Well, I fancy the appreciation is reciprocated. What’s your name?”
 
“Dickie Gordon,” responded the small boy. “I’m staying with my aunt and Lady Anne at the White House. I like Lady Anne.”
 
Peter laughed. “Your judgment and intuition are faultless, my son. The Lady Anne is the divinest woman the good Lord ever created.”
 
“Then you like her too?” queried Dickie.
 
“I might go farther than that,” said Peter reflectively; “adoration, worship, might be nearer my sentiments. But how, may I ask, did you find your way down here?”
 
Dickie smiled, an elfin smile of pure wickedness.
 
“I ran away from nurse. She’s got the baby in the perambulator. It’s a very young baby, and perambulators are dull things—they can’t get over stiles, or go across fields or even the tiniest kind of streams, not even streams with a plank across: the wheels are always too wide. And nurse doesn’t understand anything, not why fields are nicer than roads, and why it’s pleasant to stand still in a wood and listen, and why some walks are nice ways and some walks dull and horrid. She thinks everything’s just all the same. And I can’t explain things to her, things I know in my inside. So I just ran away and came to see you.”
 
 
“You did, did you?” responded Peter. And back his mind swung to the memory of another small boy, one of whom the Lady Anne had written to him, and of another non-understanding grown-up. Oh, those Olympians who, from their heights of common sense, cannot stoop to the level of childhood!—for stooping they assuredly would term it, though Peter took another view of the respective levels. Yet, whatever the levels, the fact undoubtedly remained the same: their utter and entire incapacity of seeing eye to eye, of hearing ear to ear, of feeling heart to heart with a child. And, mused Peter, it was unquestionable whose was the greater loss. And then he roused himself.
 
“But how about my duty?” he demanded. “Oughtn’t I to bind you, fetter you, and carry you back a prisoner to that perambulator, that very young baby, and that non-comprehending nurse?”
 
Dickie looked at him.
 
“You won’t,” he said comfortably; “besides, I want to talk.”
 
“Humph!” said Peter, again smiling lazily; “well, talk. I shall doubtless make a good audience, since the hearing of speech is now something of a novelty to me.”
 
Dickie looked at him again. The speech was not entirely clear, but the encouragement to talk was.
 
With a deep breath he began: “Nurse says this cottage is a bad place, and you’re friends with the Devil. Is he really an unpleasant person? You don’t look’s if you’d be friends with him if he were.”
 
“Hmm,” said Peter, dubious, his eyes nevertheless twinkling; “I cannot say that I have honestly a very close acquaintanceship with him—at least, I hope not. But I have never fancied him a pleasant person. He has”—Peter sought wildly in his mind for the best reason for the averred unpleasantness—“so little idea of playing the game.”
 
“Yes?” It was Dickie’s turn to be dubious now.
 
“Oh,” thought Peter distractedly, “I have not only to make statements, but I have to substantiate them!” Aloud he spoke, firmly, and with an air of conviction: “He does not play the game, because he pretends to be friendly when he isn’t, [Pg 188]and he tells us things are nice when they aren’t.” This, at all events, was good and orthodox teaching. Peter patted himself on the back, so to speak.
 
“Like the apple what Adam and Eve ate,” said Dickie solemnly; “they thought it was going to taste so ............