“Wait!” he said slowly, with passion strong enough for the moment to arrest his tears. “Wait till I be grawed up. Then ’twill be my turn, an’ I’ll do ’e all the ill ever I can. You’m a cowardly, cruel devil to me always, an’ I swear I’ll pay you back first instant I be strong enough to do it!”
“Get in the house an’ shut your rabbit-mouth, or I’ll give ’e something to swear for,” answered the keeper.
Then his great loss settled heavily upon Davey’s soul, and he wept and went home to his mother.
CHAPTER II
Richard Daccombe visited the little bridge over Cherry-brook yet again after his supper; and in a different mood, beside a different companion, he sat upon the granite parapet. Darkness, fretted with white moonlight, was under the fir trees; the Moor stretched dimly to the hills in one wan featureless waste; an owl cried from the wood, and one shattered chimney towered ghostly grey over the desolation. Quaint black ruins, like hump-backed giants, dotted the immediate distance, and the river twinkled and murmured under the moon, while Dick’s pipe glowed, and a girl’s voice sounded at his elbow.
“Sweetheart,” she said, “why be you so hard with Davey?”
“Leave that, Jane,” he answered. “’Tis mother has been at you—as if I didn’t know. Little twoad’s all the better for licking.”
“He’s so small, and you’m so big. He do hate you cruel, an’ your mother’s sore driven between you.”
“Mother’s soft. The child would grow up a dolt if ’twasn’t for me.”