“I’m not a great big boy!” cried Peter, “I’m only a great big little boy!”

“Don’t waste time, sweet Pete; go to work!”

“I want Joanna!” roared Peter with the voice of an infant bull.

“So we all do.  It’s because she had to go that I’m darning stockings.”

The net tightened round Peter’s defenceless body and he hurled himself against his rocking, horse and dragged it brutally to a corner.  Having disposed of most of his strength and temper in this operation, he put away the rest of his goods and chattels more quietly, but with streaming eyes and heaving bosom.

“Splendid!” commented Mother Carey.  “Joanna couldn’t have done it better, and it won’t be half so much work next time.”  Peter heard the words “next time” distinctly, and knew the grim face of Duty at last, though he was less than five.

The second and far more tragic time was when he was requested to make himself ready for luncheon,—­Kathleen to stand near and help “a little” if really necessary.  Now Peter au fond was absolutely clean.  French phrases are detestable where there is any English equivalent, but in this case there is none, so I will explain to the youngest reader—­who may speak only one language—­that the base of Peter was always clean.  He received one full bath and several partial ones in every twenty-four hours, but su-per-im-posed on this base were evidences of his eternal activities, and indeed of other people’s!  They were divided into three classes,—­those contracted in the society of Joanna when she took him out-of-doors:  such as sand, water, mud, grass stains, paint, lime, putty, or varnish; those derived from visits to his sisters at their occupations:  such as ink, paints, lead pencils, paste, glue, and mucilage; those amassed in his stays with Ellen in the kitchen:  sugar, molasses, spice, pudding sauce, black currants, raisins, dough, berry stains (assorted, according to season), chocolate, jelly, jam, and preserves; these deposits were not deep, but were simply dabs on the facade of Peter, and through them the eyes and soul of him shone, delicious and radiant.  They could be rubbed off with a moist handkerchief if water were handy, and otherwise if it were not, and the person who rubbed always wanted for some mysterious reason to kiss him immediately afterwards, for Peter had the largest kissing acquaintance in Charlestown.

When Peter had scrubbed the parts of him that showed most, and had performed what he considered his whole duty to his hair, he appeared for the first time at the family table in such a guise that if the children had not been warned they would have gone into hysterics, but he gradually grew to be proud of his toilets and careful that they should not occur too often in the same day, since it appeared to be the family opinion that he should make them himself.

There was a tacit feeling, not always expressed, that Nancy, after mother, held the reins of authority, and also that she was a person of infinite resource.  The Gloom-Dispeller had been her father’s name for her, but he had never thought of her as a Path-Finder, a gallant adventurer into unknown and untried regions, because there had been small opportunity to test her courage or her ingenuity.