"Why?" Tilda echoed almost bitterly. "Oh, you needn' think I'll want to marry yer when all's done. Why? Oh, merely to 'elp you, bein' the sort you are. All you've got to do, bein' the sort you are, is to sit quiet an' teach me. But I got to be a lady, if it costs me my shift."
CHAPTER XII.
PURSUED.
At ten o'clock Sam harnessed up again, and shortly before noon our travellers left the waterway by which they had travelled hitherto, and passed out to the right through a cut, less than a quarter of a mile long, where a rising lock took them into the Stratford-on-Avon Canal.
Said Sam as he worked the lock, the two children standing beside and watching—
"Now see here, when you meet your clever friend Bill, you put him two questions from me. First, why, when the boat's through, am I goin' to draw the water off an' leave the lock empty?"
Before Tilda could answer, Arthur Miles exclaimed—
"I know! It's because we 're going uphill, and at the other locks, when we were going downhill, the water emptied itself."
"Right, so far as you go," nodded Sam. "But why should a lock be left empty?"
The boy thought for a moment.