med Big Cloud who
lived in the rhododendron bushes by the lake. I never found him, though
I went carefully through them one day. He also said that there were
pirates on the island in the lake. I never saw them either.

What he liked telling me about best was the city of gold and precious
stones which you came to if you walked far enough through the woods at
the back of the stables. He was always meaning to go off there some
day, and, from the way he described it, I didn't blame him. It was
certainly a pretty good city. It was just right for dogs, too, he said,
having bones and liver and sweet cakes there and everything else a dog
could want. It used to make my mouth water to listen to him.

We were never apart. I was with him all day, and I slept on the mat in
his room at night. But all the time I couldn't get out of my mind what
Jack had said. I nearly did once, for it seemed to me that I was so
necessary to Peter that nothing could separate us; but just as I was
feeling safe his father gave him a toy aeroplane, which flew when you
wound it up. The day he got it, I might not have been on the earth. I
trailed along, but he hadn't a word to say to me.

Well, something went wrong with the aeroplane the second day, and it
wouldn't fly, and then I was in solid again; but I had done some hard
thinking and I knew just where I stood. I was the newest toy, that's
what I was, and something newer might come along at any moment, and
then it would be the finish for me. The only thing for me was to do
something to impress the adults, just as Jack had said.

Goodness knows I tried. But everything I did turned out wrong. There
seemed to be a fate about it. One morning, for example, I was trotting
round the house early, and I met a fellow I could have sworn was a
burglar. He wasn't one of the family, and he wasn't one of the
servants, and he was hanging round the house in a most suspicious way.
I chased him up a tree, and it wasn't till the family came down to
breakfast, two hours later, that I found that he was a guest who had
arrived overnight, and had come out early to enjoy the freshness of the
morning and the sun shining on the lake, he being that sort of man.
That didn't help me much.

Next, I got in wrong with the boss, Peter's father. I don't know why. I
met him out in the park with another man, both carrying bundles of
sticks and looking very serious and earnest. Just as I reached him, the
boss lifted one of the sticks an