"Woa! woa! ma lass! Hands off, tha little vixen, till a' git a look at tha!" he said soothingly, as he prisoned two small hands in one huge fist, and with the other held his adversary almost tenderly at arm's length. What he saw, as he afterwards described it to Craddock, was just a "moit o' pistols an' pouches."
"Well! well! Aw'm,--aw'm jiggered!" he exclaimed at last; adding argumentatively, "Whatten iver mad tha' go fur t' do it, tha foolish lass?"
Something in his broad, not unkindly rebuke seemed to take the starch out of the Most Nailin' Bad Shot. It seemed to cower in on itself and become smaller; though, as Joe Banks told himself perplexedly, it had been small enough to begin with.
"Well, aw am jiggered," he repeated more softly. "Whatten iver mad tha' do it, ma lass?"
The answer was feminine and disconcerting; a sudden storm of tears. So they stood, the quaintest couple in the world. She bristling with cold steel of sorts; he bareheaded in the moonlight, with nothing but his hands for weapons.
"Dunnot," he said soothingly, not without a certain trepidation. "Aw'm noān goān t' hurt thee, ma gell. We'm not thaat soort t' womenkind; an' tha's a main pratty gell." Here he laughed softly; a laugh that was lost in a third--
"Wall, aw'm jiggered."
He appeared to be so, for he ceased thrusting her from him--she being, indeed, too much engaged with tears to make it dangerous--and passed his hand over his forehead as if to clear his brain.
"Aw'm noān goān t' hurt tha, ma lass," he repeated suddenly, as if for his own information. "Aw'm nobbut goān t' shame tha' fur tha' badness."
And with that he lifted her right up like a baby, sate down on a neighbouring rock, and set her on his knee.