Bargee looked about him. The boy was seated beside the tiller and paying no attention to his master; he was still busy with his bread and cheese. The toll-keeper yet lingered within the office, so for his benefit bargee raised his voice as he said roughly,—
"No, no, I tell ye. There's no use o' ye hangin' an' pesterin' here no longer. I durstn't disobey orders, an' that's the end o't." Then he added in a rapid whisper into the woman's quick ear as he boarded his craft,—
"Push on to the next lock, it's about a mile further, an' I'll take ye in then. But mind, if ye're asked any questions, mum's the word."
With a knowing wink and comprehensive smile the pair leisurely sauntered off the wharf; and when the canal-boat slowed in passing the next toll, with an agile spring the red-haired man leaped from the path to the deck, then helped his missis, as he called the bold-eyed, black-browed woman, in beside him.
Thus Joe Harris, or Thieving Joe, as he was known among his associates, and his wife Moll came to be passengers along with our two little travellers on board the Smiling Jane.
The bargeman himself now took the tiller. The boy had stolen back to his story, so the newcomers drew somewhat apart, where they sat talking to each other in subdued, earnest tones of the small voyagers then sleeping so serenely in the dirty bunker below—the pretty pair whom they had of set purpose shadowed along the canal, watched aboard the boat, and determinedly followed.
"We've trapped them sure enough this time, Moll, my beauty," said the man, indicating the cabin and the little creatures therein by a side nod of his great red head.
"Ay, surely," answered Moll, with a slow smile. "I expec' the pretty dears is sleepin' sweet as angels down in that dirty hole. But, Joe, now as we have got 'em, do you think it'll be safe to keep 'em? Won't their folks make a row, an' sen' the beaks after us?"
"Folks!" echoed Mr. Harris in mockery. "My, you are a green un, though you're sich a black beauty! Do you suppose if they had any folks belongin' to 'em worth speakin' o' that they'd be let go galavantin' round as we've seed them—here, there, an' everywhere? No, no; they'd be walkin' about hand in hand as prim as peonies, wi' a starched-up nurse girl at their heels."
"They're out on a lark, you bet; that's what it is," said Moll, nodding her head sagaciously. "Kids like they is allus up to somethin'. Maybe they've runned away. More'n likely."