“My dog chased a little animal—a rat or a squirrel—into it. I followed to see where he went. It was a very good place. The sort of place I needed. Here I have lived.”
“It’s a dandy hidin’-place,” says Mark, kind of meaningly.
“Yes,” says Motu, as calm and cool as ice, but that is all he did say. There wasn’t a word of explanation about it, or why he wanted to hide, or what he was afraid of, or anything. It began to look pretty mysterious to me and I wanted to talk it over with Mark. And there was that dagger, too. I didn’t see it any place, and Motu didn’t have it with him. Somehow I wanted to have it located.
“How about that dagger?” I asked right out.
Motu’s teeth showed in a smile. I guess he was remembering how easy he had sneaked up and got it back from us.
“I have put the little sword in a safe place—where my careless hands cannot again lose it. I was in despair. I searched, but in vain. Then from the edge of the woods I saw the fat boy who is called Mark Tidd pick it from the ground. I was angry—yet I was glad. I knew where the little sword was, and I knew I should have it again.”
“You might not,” says Plunk, “if we hadn’t left it laying around so careless.”
“My father put the little sword in my hand. He said, ‘Motu, I give you this to keep fresh the honor of our family. Let it never pass from your hands.’ So I would have taken it again, even though it had meant much fighting.”
It sounded like something out of a book, but I guess it was all right. Foreigners do odd things, anyway, and to a man that isn’t a foreigner they act sort of crazy. Maybe they think we act crazy, and I expect if we were to go to Japan we’d be foreigners, wouldn’t we? It looks like there was something to be said on both sides of the argument. Anyhow, my father never talked to me as if he was reciting something out of Shakespeare’s plays.
Mark began to crawl out of Motu’s hiding-place and we followed after.