"Homesick!" he said. "I'm only homesick when I'm out of the sight of our brave chimney; and well you know it."
"'Tis Dorcas," explained Rhoda. "She's giving mother and father a lot of trouble for the minute. She'll see sense come presently, we'll hope."
"Billy Screech?"
Rhoda nodded.
"She'll come round; but for some cause us common folk can't fathom, she's in love with the man. So she says, anyhow, though 'tis hard to believe it."
"As to that," declared Margaret, "Billy ban't particular ugly. He've got a long, sharp nose, I grant you--"
"Yes," interrupted David, "and he've been told to keep that nose away from the Warren House; and the mischief is he won't obey father's commands. Two nights agone the moon was full, and Rhoda went out for to breathe the air and see if there was a fox down by the fowl-house. And a fox there was--long nose and all, and his name was Billy Screech."
He looked at his sister and she continued the narrative.
"I hate spying," she said, "and God, He knows I didn't go afield to seek that man, or any other man. And I thought Dorcas was to bed, for she'd gone off after supper with a faceache. But travelling quick and silent, as my way is, over the close surf of the warrens, I came round a rock right on top of 'em. And--" Rhoda grew hot at the unpleasant recollection and broke off.
"And he was sitting on a stone, and she was sitting on his lap," said David, who spared his sister the details. "Little red-headed fool! I wish I'd found 'em, for I'd have thrashed the man to jelly afore her eyes, and cured her that way."