“The Squire told me this morning that I was not to climb the rocks for eggs.”
Queenie only looked the more scornful.
“Of course he did. They all do. Papa always does whenever we come here. If he had known Phil was going to-day, he would have forbidden him; but nobody cares for that. Rules are only made to be broken, you know. They must have exceptions, or they wouldn’t be rules—everybody knows that. I know now why you would tell the Squire. You wanted him to forbid you because you were afraid. I always thought you were a horrid little coward, and now I know it!”
When Queenie was vexed, she did not pause to consider other people’s feelings, and she had grown up with brothers who were used to her sharp speeches and did not mind them much. They knew that “her bark was worse than her bite,” as the proverb says, and did not trouble themselves over her angry words; but Bertie was not hardened like this. He was not accustomed to be spoken to so harshly, and his eyes filled again with tears of mortification and distress.
Queenie was something of a little tyrant. She liked to feel her own power, and she was inclined to use it rather mercilessly. Seeing that she had made an impression upon her companion, she proceeded to improve the occasion.
“You who lectured Phil so about courage! It is uncommonly easy to talk big, Master Bertie” (Queenie evidently found it so, at any rate); “but when it comes to deeds the case is very different. The idea that you ever dared to talk to him about courage! I wonder you’re not ashamed of yourself!”
Bertie attempted no defence: for one thing, talking was not his strong point; and for another, he knew that any words of his would be quite wasted on Queenie, who was entirely impervious to reasonable argument when she had once mounted her high horse. So there was silence between them for a few moments; and, before anybody had attempted to reopen the conversation, the silence was broken by an alarming sound, the cry of a boy in distress.
For the last few minutes they had ceased to watch Phil’s ascent of the cliff, being engrossed in their own argument. Looking up quickly now with startled eyes, they saw that his position had become sufficiently perilous.
He had clambered from ledge to ledge with great skill and address; but he had not troubled himself to make sure, in the excitement of the ascent, that it was possible to descend in the same manner. He had been tempted on to really difficult places, and suddenly he had found himself upon a narrow rocky ridge whence he could make no step either forward or backward. His last step had been a fragment of rock that had given way as he quitted it, and he had narrowly escaped a fall that must have proved fatal. But his present position was perilous enough to threaten his safety, and, as is so often the case in the presence of real danger, giddiness seized upon him, and he clung to the hard rock with convulsive terror, and called aloud in his fright.
Queenie’s shriek of terror brought David quickly to their side, and he at once realized the peril of Phil’s position; but he knew better than the children what to do, and the emergency seemed to give him courage and presence of mind beyond his years.