“Oh, I see,” said he, smiling.  “So you want to come on a voyage with me, do you?—­Ah hah!”

“I want to go on all your voyages with you.  It would be much easier for you if you had someone to carry the butterfly-nets and note-books.  Wouldn’t it now?”

For a long time the Doctor sat thinking, drumming on the desk with his fingers, while I waited, terribly impatiently, to see what he was going to say.

At last he shrugged his shoulders and stood up.

“Well, Stubbins,” said he, “I’ll come and talk it over with you and your parents next Thursday.  And—­well, we’ll see.  We’ll see.  Give your mother and father my compliments and thank them for their invitation, will you?”

Then I tore home like the wind to tell my mother that the Doctor had promised to come.

THE THIRTEENTH CHAPTER

A TRAVELER ARRIVES

The next day I was sitting on the wall of the Doctor’s garden after tea, talking to Dab-Dab.  I had now learned so much from Polynesia that I could talk to most birds and some animals without a great deal of difficulty.  I found Dab-Dab a very nice, old, motherly bird—­though not nearly so clever and interesting as Polynesia.  She had been housekeeper for the Doctor many years now.

Well, as I was saying, the old duck and I were sitting on the flat top of the garden-wall that evening, looking down into the Oxenthorpe Road below.  We were watching some sheep being driven to market in Puddleby; and Dab-Dab had just been telling me about the Doctor’s adventures in Africa.  For she had gone on a voyage with him to that country long ago.

Suddenly I heard a curious distant noise down the road, towards the town.  It sounded like a lot of people cheering.  I stood up on the wall to see if I could make out what was coming.  Presently there appeared round a bend a great crowd of school-children following a very ragged, curious-looking woman.

“What in the world can it be?” cried Dab-Dab.

The children were all laughing and shouting.  And certainly the woman they were following was most extraordinary.  She had very long arms and the most stooping shoulders I have ever seen.  She wore a straw hat on the side of her head with poppies on it; and her skirt was so long for her it dragged on the ground like a ball-gown’s train.  I could not see anything of her face because of the wide hat pulled over her eyes.  But as she got nearer to us and the laughing of the children grew louder, I noticed that her hands were very dark in color, and hairy, like a witch’s.

Then all of a sudden Dab-Dab at my side startled me by crying out in a loud voice,

“Why, it’s Chee-Chee!—­Chee-Chee come back at last!  How dare those children tease him!  I’ll give the little imps something to laugh at!”

And she flew right off the wall down into the road and made straight for the children, squawking away in a most terrifying fashion and pecking at their feet and legs.  The children made off down the street back to the town as hard as they could run.