All thought that was the best of jokes and laughed.  They passed round a great chasm in the street and sidewalk.  Then they came to long rows of bodies stretched on the grass, or rather what was left of the grass, in the Park.  Leonore shuddered.  “Are they all dead?” she whispered.  “Dead!  Shurely not.  It’s the regiment sleepin’,” she was told.  They passed between these rows for a little distance.  “This is him,” said Dennis, “sleepin’ like a babby.”  Dennis turned his back and began to describe the explosion to Mrs. D’Alloi and Watts.

There, half covered with a blanket, wrapped in a regulation great coat, his head pillowed on a roll of newspapers, lay Peter.  Leonore knelt down on the ground beside him, regardless of the proprieties or the damp.  She listened to hear if he was breathing, and when she found that he actually was, her face had on it a little thanksgiving proclamation of its own.  Then with the prettiest of motherly manners, she softly pulled the blanket up and tucked it in about his arms.  Then she looked to see if there was not something else to do.  But there was nothing.  So she made more.  “The poor dear oughtn’t to sleep without something on his head.  He’ll take cold.”  She took her handkerchief and tried to fix it so that it should protect Peter’s head.  She tried four different ways, any one of which would have served; but each time she thought of a better way, and had to try once more.  She probably would have thought of a fifth, if Peter had not suddenly opened his eyes.

“Oh!” said Leonore, “what a shame?  I’ve waked you up.  And just as I had fixed it right.”

Peter studied the situation calmly, without moving a muscle.  He looked at the kneeling figure for some time.  Then he looked up at the arc light a little distance away.  Then he looked at the City Hall clock.  Then his eyes came back to Leonore.  “Peter,” he said finally, “this is getting to be a monomania.  You must stop it.”

“What?” said Leonore, laughing at his manner as if it was intended as a joke.

Peter put out his hand and touched Leonore’s dress.  Then he rose quickly to his feet.  “What is the matter?” he asked.

“Hello,” cried Watts.  “Have you come to?  Well.  Here we are, you see.  All the way from Newport to see you in fragments, only to be disappointed.  Shake!”

Peter said nothing for a moment.  But after he had shaken hands, he said, “It’s very good of you to have thought of me.”

“Oh,” explained Leonore promptly, “I’m always anxious about my friends.  Mamma will tell you I am.”

Peter turned to Leonore, who had retired behind her mother.  “Such friends are worth having,” he said, with a strong emphasis on “friends.”

Then Leonore came out from behind her mother. “’How nice he’s stupid,” she thought.  “He is Peter Simple, after all.”

“Well,” said Watts, “’your friends are nearly dying with hunger and want of sleep, so the best thing we can do, since we needn’t hunt for you in scraps, is to go to the nearest hotel.  Where is that?”