The rope was no sooner made fast than Pat scrambled up it, caught up his shabby coat, and exercised his limbs of locomotion so nimbly that he was nearly out of sight before Steve could recover from his amazement. This was a whimsical way of manifesting gratitude!
“How he scampers!” Steve muttered. “What a pack of little wretches, and what a mean man Jackson is! I wanted to slide down into the well myself; and those boys know I agreed to let Pat do it on purpose to please him. Well, I’ve done with ragamuffins!—I say,” he bellowed to the nimble runaway, “you needn’t run so fast; I don’t want you: you’re no good, anyway.”
Pat knew that Stephen longed for his help; he knew that a boy, when left in the lurch, speaks somewhat as Stephen had spoken, and yet Pat hurried on.
Poor Pat! he was not aware that his unique and valued button ring, the fruit of several hours’ toil with boiling water, a broken-bladed knife, and a spoilt file, had been fractured in the well. Unconscious of his loss, he clapped his hands over his mouth, and bleated playfully and hideously.
Stephen now racked his brains to hit upon some feasible plan of taking the donkey out of the well. Suddenly a happy thought struck him. His eyes sparkled with joy. “My stars!” he exclaimed, “I see the very way to do it! I can manage it after all.”
Then he mused on Jackson’s behavior, and another thought occurred to him. “I suppose he believed I couldn’t get either of ’em out of the well. Yes, of course he did; and he thought I should have to go to the village for help. And then I wonder if he’d have set the magistrate and folks after me! Ten to one. Well, I can beat ’em all, and keep out of trouble, too.”
Yes, that was the point. If he had been necessitated to seek help, he would have been taught a wholesome lesson; but when his own precocity suggested a way out of the difficulty, he was only hardened in his mischievousness, and he admired his great cleverness.
Without further deliberation the deserted and frustrated avenger slid down the rope, took the halter and a few straps off the donkey, coiled them around his own neck, and then clambered up.
This was a foolhardy thing for him to do; for if the fastenings of the rope had given way, he and the donkey world have been left to their own resources. But the generality of boys delight in doing such things. With a careless “I’ll risk it,” they rush headlong into danger, day after day.