It was a strange picture, the boy eating his soup gluttonously, Peter Lane in his comedy tramp garb of blanket and blanket-strips, and the little girl staring at him with big, trustful eyes. Mrs. Crink put the crackers and cheese on the table.
"If you've got through takin' up time that don't belong to you, maybe I can git some work out of this brat," she snapped.
"Why, yes, ma'am," said Peter politely. "It only so happened that this boy was her brother. We didn't want to discommode you at all."
Susie turned away to her work of swabbing the bar, and Peter divided the crackers and cheese equally between himself and Buddy.
"I don't care much to have tramps come in here anyway," said Mrs. Crink. "I never knew one yit that wouldn't pick up anything loose," but Peter made no reply. He had a matter of tremendous import on his mind. He felt that he had taken the weight of Susie's troubles on his shoulders in addition to those of Buddy, and he had resolved to ask Widow Potter to take the two children!
The parting of the two children had for them none of the pathos it had for Peter. When Buddy had eaten the last scrap of cracker he got down from his chair.
"Good-by, Buddy," she answered, and that was all, and Peter led the boy out of the place.
There are, in Riverbank, alleys between each two of the streets parallel with the river, and Peter, now that he had once more resolved not to allow Briggles to have Buddy, took to the alleys as he passed through the town. The outlandishness of his garb made him the more noticeable, he knew, and he wished to avoid being seen. He traversed the entire town thus, even where a creek made it necessary for him to scramble down one bank and up another, until the alleys ended at the far side of the town. There he crossed the vacant lot where a lumber mill had once stood, and struck into the river road.
The boy seemed to take it all as a matter of course, but Peter kept a wary eye on the road, ready to seek a hiding-place at the approach of any rig that looked as if it might contain the Reverend Briggles, but none appeared. A farmer, returning from town with a wagon, stopped at a word from Peter, and allowed him to put Buddy in the wagon and clamber in with him. They got out again at Mrs. Potter's gate.