"Must not!" mimicked Master Dick. "You're getting stupider and stupider, living up here. If you don't look out, one of these days you'll turn into an old maid—just like Miss Quiney."
"Hs-s-sh! She's downstairs somewhere."
"I don't care if she hears." Dicky ran his eyes defiantly along the line of ground-floor windows under the verandah, then upturned his face again. "After coming all this way on purpose to play with you," he protested.
"You have made yourself dreadfully hot."
"I am hot," the boy confessed. "I gave Piggy the slip at the foot of the hill, and I've run every step of the way."
"Is he here?" Ruth glanced nervously toward a clump of elms around which the path from the entrance-gate curved into view. "But you oughtn't to call Mr. Silk 'Piggy,' you know. It—it's ungentlemanly."
"Why, I took the name from you! You said yourself, one day, that he was a pig; and so he is. He has piggy eyes, and he eats too much, and there's something about the back of his neck you must have noticed."
"It's cruel of you, Dicky, to remember and cast up what I said when I knew no better. You know how hard I am learning: in the beginning you helped me to learn."
"Did I?" mused Dicky. "Then I wish I hadn't, if you're going to grow up and treat me like this. Oh, very well," he added stoutly after a pause, "then I'm learning too, learning to be a sailor; and it'll be first-rate practice to climb aloft to you, over the verandah. You don't mind my spitting on my hands? It's a way they have in the Navy."
"Dicky, don't be foolish! Think of Miss Quiney's roses." Finding him inexorable, Ruth began to parley. "I don't want to see Mr. Silk. But if I come down to you, it will not be to play. We'll creep off to the Well, or somewhere out of hail, and there you must let me read—or perhaps I'll read aloud to you. Promise?"