"Time enough, time enough," answered Mrs. Joe cheerily, yet with a shamefaced look. "What's yer hurry? Are you so keen to leave us, eh?" she asked, fixing her bold, smiling eyes on the earnest countenance of the little lad.
"No—that is—ah—not 'zactly," stammered Darby, feeling himself in a fix between truth and politeness. "We didn't come on a visit, you know; we came only for the night. And you promised to let us go this morning after breakfast, and to show us the way."
Molly only laughed, looking this way and that; but Joe began roughly,—
"Look ee here now, young Hop-o'-my-thumb, we've had enough o' this humbug. Ye're both here, an' here ye're goin' to stay till I've done wi' ye. Do you heed?" he shouted, gripping Darby by the shoulder and giving him a hearty shake, while the dwarf's sunken eyes flashed with an angry gleam.
Joan began to whimper softly into the folds of her tartan shawl, but Darby looked from the black-browed woman to the coarse, red-haired man with stern, reproachful eyes.
"You promised—she promised," he said bravely, although his lips were quivering piteously, and all the healthy colour had fled from his cheeks, leaving them pale as the petals of a faded white rose.
Moll laughed again more loudly than before. Did the little softy really believe that big folks meant everything they said? And looking into her broadly-smiling face and unscrupulous eyes, Darby Dene had his first lesson in the meaning of deceit. He there and then began to realize that there are people in the world to whom falsehood comes easy, who think little or nothing of a broken vow.
"Why do you wish us to stay with you?" he asked, turning to Joe as the more hopeful of the two, because Joe said pretty much what he meant, and Moll did not. "You don't love us, and of course you can't expect that we can be very fond of you after—after—well, we know you for only such a little while. Do please let us go," urged the child in pleading tones; and now the big tears rolled down his cheeks and splashed in heavy drops, like a summer shower, over the breast of his shabby velvet blouse, while Joan sat and stared from Moll to Joe in wide-eyed silent terror.
"Not likely!" replied Mr. Harris, with an ugly laugh. "You're goin' to begin yer eddication, my son, an' little missy here too. So now shut up, an' let's have no more o' yer blubb'rin'. Ye're goin' to do as I bid ye, or if ye don't I'll manage to learn ye, I'm thinkin'. Eh?" he cried, playfully pinching Joan's small pink ear until she screamed with pain, then glancing from face to face of the party gathered around the fagot fire, fingering idly at the same time the heavy whip in his belt with which he kept Bruno to his tasks. "An' min', if ye try to slope—to run away—well, it'll be all the worse for ye an' for anybody as helps ye," he added savagely, with a scowl in the direction of the dwarf, who sat a little apart, his head leaning upon his hands, his barely-tasted breakfast on the ground beside him.
Joe then lighted his pipe, took a gun and some rabbit-snares from the caravan, and shouting to Tonio to look sharp, he sauntered off in the direction of the fir plantation, with the black boy following dutifully at his heels.