Part 28 (1/2)

”Did you let the water out of the tub?”

”No, Master. I didn't know.”

Ben got up, and Pete followed him, eager for the lesson. Ben viewed the color of the water frothing with suds.

”I think you must be clean,” he remarked dryly, as he opened the waste-pipe, ”or at least you will be after a few more ducks.”

”Yes, Master, to see her.”

He showed the boy how to wash out the tub which the little fellow did with a will.

”Now, then, to bed with you, and we'll have an early breakfast, for we have a busy day to-morrow. Good-night.”

Pete ambled away to the garage so happy that he still felt himself in a dream. To see his G.o.ddess, and never to go back to Rufus Carder! Those two facts chased each other around a rosy circle in his brain until he fell asleep.

When Ben Barry came out of his room the next morning he found Pete squatting outside his door. He regarded the broken, earth-stained shoes and the ragged coat and trousers, which if they had ever been of a distinct color were of none now, and the thick mop of hair. The eyes raised to his met a gay smile.

”h.e.l.lo, 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 s.h.i.+fty there.

When they reentered the roadster, Ben spoke to him before he started the car.

”Do you know why I have done all this, Pete?”