“Would shot do?” asked she.
“It would be the very thing; but where can I get any?”
“There is some that was left of papa’s. It is in the right-hand corner of the second drawer of the bureau, wrapped up in a newspaper.”
“What a plague! I can’t remember your ‘seconds,’ and ‘right-hands,’ and fiddle-faddles.” He worked on at his pebbles. They would not do.
“I think if you were good-natured, Maggie, you might go for me.”
“Oh, Ned! I’ve all this long seam to do. Mamma said I must finish it before tea; and that I might play a little if I had done it first,” said Maggie, rather plaintively; for it was a real pain to her to refuse a request.
“It would not take you five minutes.”
Maggie thought a little. The time would only be taken out of her playing, which, after all, did not signify; while Edward was really busy about his ship. She rose, and clambered up the steep grassy slope, slippery with the heat.
Before she had found the paper of shot, she heard her mother’s voice calling, in a sort of hushed hurried loudness, as if anxious to be heard by one person yet not by another—“Edward, Edward, come home quickly. Here’s Mr. Buxton coming along the Fell-Lane;—he’s coming here, as sure as sixpence; come, Edward, come.”
Maggie saw Edward put down his ship and come. At his mother’s bidding it certainly was; but he strove to make this as little apparent as he could, by sauntering up the slope, with his hands in his pockets, in a very independent and _négligé_ style. Maggie had no time to watch longer; for now she was called too, and down stairs she ran.