“You are much more than a child. Uncle Nigel thinks so, too, I am sure.”
“All the more reason, then, for my having a right to amuse myself as I please. And I am a child, for I do amuse myself.”
Eppie stood staring out rigidly at the blighted prospect, and he took her unyielding hand. “Poor Elspeth is lying on her face. Do let us go on. I want you to hear what Agnes has to say next.”
She turned to him now. “I don’t believe a word you say. You only did it for me. You are only doing it for me now.”
“Well, what if I did? What if I do? Can’t I enjoy doing things for you? And really, really, Eppie, I do think it fun. I assure you I do.”
“I think you are a hero,” Eppie said solemnly, and at this absurdity he burst into his high, shrill laugh, and renewed his supplications; but supplications were in vain. She refused to let him play with her again. He might do things for the dolls,—yes, she reluctantly consented to that at last,—he might take the part of robber or of dangerous wild beast in the woods, but into domestic relations, as it were, he should not enter with them; and from this determination Gavan could not move her.
As far as his dignity in the eyes of others went, he might have gone on playing dolls with her all summer; Eppie realized, with surprise and relief, that Gavan’s assurance had been well founded. Uncle Nigel, evidently, did not think him unmanly, and there was no chaffing. It really was as he had said, he was so little a child that he could do as he chose. His dignity needed no defense.
But though the doll episode was not to be repeated, other and more equal ties knit her friendship with Gavan. Wide vistas of talk opened from their lessons, from their readings together. As they rambled through the heather they would talk of the Odyssey, of Plutarch’s Lives, of nearer great people and events in history. Gavan listened with smiling interest while Eppie expressed her hatreds and her loves, correcting her vehemence, now and then, by a reference to mitigatory circumstance. Penelope was one of the people she hated. “See, Gavan, how she neglected her husband’s dog while he was away—let him starve to death on a dunghill.”
Gavan surmised that the Homeric Greeks had little sense of responsibility about dogs.
“They were horrid, then,” said Eppie. “Dear Argos! Think of him trying to wag his tail when he was dying and saw Ulysses; he was horrid, too, for he surely might have just stopped for a moment and patted his head. I’m glad that Robbie didn’t live in those times. You wouldn’t let Robbie die on a dunghill if I were to go away!”