"Hello, there," said Ben. "Did you think I might get away?"
The dwarf rose. "I--I didn't--didn't know how much--much was a dream," he stammered.
"I hope you had a real breakfast," said Ben.
The dwarf smiled. It was a dreary, unaccustomed sort of crack in his weather-beaten face. "I had coffee, too," he replied in an awestruck tone.
Ben laughed. "Good enough. You go out to the car and wait till I come. I'm going to my breakfast now."
In less than an hour they were on their way. Pete's eyes had lost their dullness.
Ben drove to a department store, on a small scale such as the cities boast. He parked his car, and when he told Pete to get out the boy began looking about at once for Geraldine.
"Is she here, Master?" he asked as they entered the store.
"No, we shall see her to-night," was the reply.
Then more miracles began to happen to Pete. He was taken from one section to another in the store and when he emerged again into the street, he hardly knew himself. He was wearing new underclothes, stockings, shoes, coat, vest; even the phony legs had been cared for in the trousers, cut off to suit the little fellow's peculiar needs, and his eyes seemed to have grown larger in the process. Under his arm he carried a box containing more underwear.
Next they drove to a barber's where Pete's hair was properly cut; then to a hat store and he was fitted to a hat.
When they came out, Ben regarded his work whimsically. The boy was not a bad-looking boy. He liked the direct manner of the dwarf's grateful, almost reverent, gaze up into his own merry eyes. There was nothing shifty there.
When they reëntered the roadster, Ben spoke to him before he started the car.
"Do you know why I have done all this, Pete?"
The boy shook his head. "Because you came down out of the sky?" he questioned.
"No, it is just because you took care of Miss Melody; because you put those letters underneath her door."
Pete's face crimsoned with happiness. "I helped her--I--I helped her get away," he said.
"Yes, and she will never forget it, and neither will I."
"You--you--asked me if I loved her," said Pete, his mind returning to the day of the motor-cycle visit.
"Yes, and--and when she was gone up to--to heaven, I wanted to die till I--I remembered that she--she wanted to go."