There was not so much embarrassment between them this time, perhaps because they were in the freedom of the wide out-of-doors, and David felt more at ease. He was plainly disappointed, however, that Mr. Jack was not there.
"But I wanted to see him! I wanted to see him 'specially," he lamented.
"You'd better stay, then. He'll be home by and by," comforted Jill. "He's gone pot-boiling."
"Pot-boiling! What's that?"
Jill chuckled.
"Well, you see, really it's this way: he sells something to boil in other people's pots so he can have something to boil in ours, he says. It's stuff from the garden, you know. We raise it to sell. Poor Jack—and he does hate it so!"
David nodded sympathetically.
"I know—and it must be awful, just hoeing and weeding all the time."
"Still, of course he knows he's got to do it, because it's out of doors, and he just has to be out of doors all he can," rejoined the girl. "He's sick, you know, and sometimes he's so unhappy! He doesn't say much. Jack never says much—only with his face. But I know, and it—it just makes me want to cry."
At David's dismayed exclamation Jill jumped to her feet. It owned to her suddenly that she was telling this unknown boy altogether too many of the family secrets. She proposed at once a race to the foot of the hill; and then, to drive David's mind still farther away from the subject under recent consideration, she deliberately lost, and proclaimed him the victor.