“Well, we’re going there,” said the boy. “You can come with us, if you like.”
He was a meaty youth of some twelve summers, with an imbecile self-satisfied face and porky eyes; but his stylish white flannels and little Oxford-blue blazer with the yellow badge on its pocket spoke him quite the riverside dandy.
Gilead fell into pace with the two, and the little girl kept peeping up at him from the other side of her cavalier. She was the dearest charmer of nine, dressed in a sort of sweet Directory frock with heliotrope sprays; and the shepherd’s straw hat on her head had its mauve ribbon poked full of real daisies.
Presently the boy, shouldering his companion a little apart, spoke something in her ear, and she whispered back “O, Georgy!” and flushed as pink as an apple-blossom.
“Please,” she said, being nudged to the soft impeachment, “Georgy says he believes you must have come about Pilot.”
Gilead smiled, oddly enlightened.
“The dog mentioned in the advertisement?” he said. “Did you put it in?”
“No, I did,” said the boy, sniggering. “I say, what a lark! Have you really come about him?”
“Supposing I have,” said Gilead; “what then?”
The boy grinned, but did not answer.