“Why don’t you go to the house and get another?”
“They’re all broken. Mr Selmes, couldn’t you mend it for me?”
“I’ll try. Let’s see. Ah, got a bit of reimpje about you?”
The youngster felt in his pockets.
“No, I haven’t,” he said.
“Well, you’d better cut away to the house and get one,” said Dick.
There is a modicum of cussedness, sometimes vague, sometimes more pronounced, inherent in most children.
This one had his share of it. He was fond of Hazel, and attached to his rescuer, yet there was something about the two which had aroused his infantile curiosity. When he saw them alone together—which he did pretty frequently—a sort of instinct to watch them would come uppermost in his unformed mind, and this was upon him now. So he said—
“Never mind about the catapult, Mr Selmes. I’m tired. I’ll sit and talk to you and Hazel.”
“Well, what shall we talk about, Jacky?” said Dick, making a virtue of necessity.