“There’s something alarming in a little girl who doesn’t like gingerbread,” he said; but there was a professional look in his eye.
“She never eats gingerbread,” Nell exclaimed, [226] ]almost indignant with him for having fears when the child looked so rosy.
“Poppet’s all right,” he said in a low tone, as they went on; and Nellie could have cried in her relief.
“Peter next,” she said.
They went down into the paddock, where [Peter was engaged] in chasing a fat duck from end to end, without a thought in his mind of being cruel to it. He was hot, certainly, but that was the exertion of running and shouting.
“Is your throat sore?” Nellie burst out, before they fairly reached him.
“I thould think I can thout if I like,” he said in an injured tone, taking her anxious query for sarcasm.
Alan caught him by the back of his sailor coat.
“Mad, quite mad,” he said—“only lunatics rush about like this. Hold him while we find out the symptoms, Nellie, and see whether we’ll have to extract his teeth, or put his legs in plaster-of-Paris.”
“He’s all right too, I think,” he said, when the released boy sprang away again after the duck, that was panting in a corner with one anxious eye on its enemy.