“Yes. It is a long way off.”
“But we should have to run there if the Kafirs came,” protested that doughty youth.
“Aha! Who’s funky now? Who wants to run away now—eh?” jeered his sister.
“Hush!” said Lilian, in that sweet, soothing way of hers, that stood her in far better stead than any amount of sternness. “You mustn’t quarrel now, you know.” Suddenly the urchin fixed his gaze upon her, and, with mischief gleaming from his blue eyes, exclaimed:
“I saw you this morning—you and that man.”
Lilian felt herself flushing all over. She tried to direct his attention to the lesson, but the imp, with that mixture of mulishness and malice which seems the invariable attribute of the infant prodigy oft-times petted, continued:
“I did. I saw you ki—”
“Harry!” cried Rose, making as if she would rush upon the delinquent. “I’ll go and tell mamma about you, at once. Send him out of the room, Miss Strange—do!”
Poor Lilian! Her delicate, sensitive nature was indeed undergoing acute laceration at the tongue of this urchin, on whom she had lavished nothing but tenderness and care. Whether from perversity, or with a savage enjoyment of the pain he was inflicting, the cub went on:
“I don’t care, Rose! I did see them. They were—”