And then, before he could tuck the sleeves of his flannel shirt--which seemed to have grown until they were ridiculously long--into his coat cuffs--which seemed to have become ridiculously short--a young girl jumped from behind one of the old apple trees and stood staring at him. Peter took off his hat as if she had been a princess. He was in the state of mind when he would have taken off his hat to a wax figure.
But the girl stood but for a moment. Then she ran toward him.
"I know who you are!" she cried. "You 're Uncle Peter, ain't you? I'm Susie!"
"Susie?" said Peter. "Are _you_ Susie?" He tried to greet her as a man should greet a strange child, but she would have none of it. She threw her arm around his right arm and hugged it, jumping up and down.
"O Uncle Peter! Uncle Peter!" she cried joyously, and turning, she screamed at the top of her voice: "Bud-dy! B-u-u-u-dy! Bud-dy! Here's Uncle Peter!"
Around the corner of the house popped a hatless, kinky head.
"Uncle Peter! Uncle Peter!" screamed Buddy, running with a strange little hippety-hop. "O Uncle Peter! My Uncle Peter! My Uncle Peter!" and he threw himself into Peter's arms, laughing and crying and trembling with joy, repeating over and over, through the laughter and the tears: "My Uncle Peter! My Uncle Peter!"
"My Buddy! My old Buddy-boy!" Peter murmured, hugging him close. "My old Buddy-boy!"
So it happened that he was not thinking of his new clothes when Mrs. Potter came to the kitchen door.
"Well, for the land's sake, Peter Lane," she cried, while Buddy clung to his neck and Susie clung around one leg, "it's about time! I thought you never _was_ cornin'. I been waitin' here for you, with these two fatherless children--"
From the kitchen came the rackety-banging of the alarm-clock, proving that, as the clock was set to ring at six, Peter had found a mother for the fatherless children at just seventeen minutes past three.
"If it wouldn't annoy you too much to get married, Mrs. Potter," said Peter, gasping at his own temerity, and wiping his forehead on the sleeve of his new coat, "I can--I could--we'd have quite a nice little family to start off with right away."
"Annoy me? Is that what you call a proposal to marry me, Peter Lane?" asked Mrs. Potter scornfully. "Ain't you ever goin' to be able to talk up like a man!"