Charling lay and looked at the white road. Somebody must go along it presently. Roads were made for people to go along. Then when any people came by she would speak to them, and they would help her and tell her what to do. "I wonder what a girl ought to do when she runs away from home?" said Charling to herself. "Boys go to sea, of course; but I don't suppose a pirate would care about engaging a cabin-girl—" She fell a-musing, however, on the probable woes of possible cabin-girls, and their chances of becoming admirals, as cabin-boys always did in the stories; and so deep were her musings that she positively jumped when a boy, passing along the road, began suddenly to whistle. It was the air of a comic song, in a minor key, and its inflections were those of a funeral march. It went to Charling's heart. Now she knew, as she had never known before, how lonely and miserable she was.
She scrambled to her feet and called out, "Hi! you boy!"
The boy also jumped. But he stopped and said, "Well?" though in a tone that promised little.
"Come here," said Charling. "At least, of course, I mean come, if you please."
The boy shrugged his shoulders and came towards her.
"Well?" he said again, very grumpily, Charling thought; so she said, "Don't be cross. I wish you'd talk to me a little, if you are not too busy. If you please, I mean, of course."
She said it with her best company manner, and the boy laughed, not unkindly, but still in a grudging way. Then he threw himself down on the turf and began pulling bits of it up by the roots. "Go ahead!" said he.
But Charling could not go ahead. She looked at his handsome, sulky face, his knitted brow, twisted into fretful lines, and the cloud behind his blue eyes frightened her.
"Oh! go away!" she said. "I don't want you! Go away; you're very unkind!"
The boy seemed to shake himself awake at the sight of the tears that rushed to follow her words.