"We shall just get home in time!" cried Milly, "and nobody will know we haven't been playing about near home all the time.—Pickle, may we tell father about the city of refuge—just as a secret? I'm sure he won't mind; and if he doesn't tell mother it will be all right."
"Well, I'll think about it," answered Pickle, in his capacity of captain; "but don't you tell anything till I give you leave."
CHAPTER V.
AT THE CRAG.
"You must come, Tousle; you must, you must, you must!"
The boys were dancing round her like a pair of wild Indians, and Esther gave up the unequal struggle.
"I'll come if you want me very much," she said rather wearily, "but I think you'd enjoy yourselves just as much without me."
"Well, it's not so much that we couldn't do without you ourselves," returned Puck, with his habitual candor; "but Old Bobby says he won't have us without our keeper, and that means you, though I'm sure I don't know why he should call you that."
"Nor I," answered Esther, shaking her head. She felt very little power over the mercurial pair whom she had vainly tried to make her charge. They were fond of her, in a fashion, and she was fond of them. Their arrival had brought a new element into her life; and there were many happy hours when they played together joyously, and Esther forgot her gravity and grown-up ways, and laughed and raced about and shouted gleefully, as other children do.
Yet it could not be denied that the boys brought many new anxieties into her life, and the uncertainty as to what they would do next kept her upon tenter-hooks from week's end to week's end.