They stood and looked at one another for a moment in silence, then turned and took their opposite ways.

Peter didn’t go back to London till the late afternoon.  He had things to show Thomas on this his first day in the country.  So he took him a long walk, and Thomas sat in meadows and got a near view of cows and sheep, and saw Peter paddle in a stream and try to catch minnows in an old tin pot that he found.

Another thing that he found, or rather that found them, was a disreputable yellow dog.  He was accompanying a tramp and his wife along the road.  When the tramp sat down and untied a handkerchief full of apple pie and cold potatoes (tramps have delightful things to eat as a rule) the dog came near and asked for his share, and was violently removed to a distance by the tramp’s boot.  He cried and ran through the hedge and came upon Peter and Thomas, who were sitting on the other side, in a field.  Peter looked over the hedge and said, “Is he yours?” and was told, “Mine!  No, ’e ain’t.  ‘E’s been follerin’ us for miles, and the more I kick ’im the more ’e follers.  Wish someone’d pison ’im.  I’m sick of ’im.”  His wife, who had the weary, hopeless, utterly resigned face of some female tramps, said, “’E’ll do for ’im soon, my man will,” without much interest.

“I’ll take him with me,” said Peter, and drew the disreputable creature to him and gently rubbed his bruised side, and saw that he had rather a nice face, meant to be cheerful, and friendly and hopeful eyes.  Indeed, he must be friendly and hopeful to have followed such companions so far.

“Will you be our dog?” said Peter to him.  “Will you come walking with us in future, and have a little bit of whatever we get?  And shall we call you San Francesco, because you like disreputable people and love your brother, the sun, and keep company with your little sisters, the fleas?  Very good, then.  This is Thomas, and you may lick his face very gently, but remember that he is smaller than you and has to be tenderly treated lest he break.”

San Francesco stayed with them through the afternoon, and accompanied them back to London, smuggled under a seat, because Peter couldn’t afford a ticket for him.  He proved a likeable being on further acquaintance, with a merry grin and an amused cock of the eye; obviously one who took the world’s vagaries with humorous patience.  Peter conveyed him from Paddington to Mary Street with some difficulty, and bought a bone for him from a cat’s-meat-what-orfers man, and took him up to the bright and beautiful sitting-room.  Then he told his landlady that he was about to leave her.

“It isn’t that I’m not satisfied, you know,” he added, fearing to hurt her, “but I’m going to give up lodgings altogether.  I’m going abroad, to Italy, on Monday.”

“I see.”  Mrs. Baker saw everything in a moment.  Her young gentleman had obviously been over-spending his income (all these new things must have cost a pretty penny), and had discovered, what many discover, that flight was the only remedy.