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Involuntarily Peter spoke aloud.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I am going to stay till some one comes to kick me out.”

And then—of course it was mere fancy, but a little breeze seemed to pass through the room, like a sigh of relief or content.

CHAPTER V

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Thus Peter entered upon his estate, since there was evidently no man would say him nay. He, the wayfarer, who for two years had slept by the hedge-side or in barns, found himself possessed of a castle.

It might be conjectured whether he would find the change cramping, stifling. He did not. The windows, which he mended, he set wide open to the sun and wind. Big fires of sticks and fir-cones aired and freed the place from the odour of damp and decay that hung about it. He took the precaution of buying a couple of blankets and a mattress. Also, as he was once more to become a civilized being, at all events in his own eyes, he bought three suits of the garments called pyjamas.

They pleased Peter enormously. Blue, pink, and [Pg 45]green, he placed them on the table and looked at them. They told him as plainly as their flannel tongues could speak that he had returned to his birthright. He had purchased them in the market town already mentioned, which lay some eight miles distant from the cottage, and the purchase had been made with an air of swagger. Piping had proved a not unremunerative occupation. There was now, however, another source of income. Certainly the income would not be large at present, but it well sufficed. Peter would therefore pipe no longer for pay, but merely for pleasure.