She looked down on him without malice.
"You are such a funny boy," she remarked, and there was something in her way of saying it that made Thomas Jefferson feel little and infantile and inferior, though he was sure there must be an immense age difference in his favor.
"Why?" he demanded.
"Oh, I don't know; just because you are. If you knew French I could explain it better that way."
"I don't know anybody by that name, and I don't care," said Thomas Jefferson doggedly; and went back to his fishing.
Followed another interval of silence, in which two more worms were fed to the insatiable sucker at the bottom of the pool. Then came the volcanic outburst.
"I think you are mean, mean!" she sobbed, with an angry stamp of her foot. "I—I want to go ho-ome!"
"Well, I reckon there ain't anybody holdin' you," said Thomas Jefferson brutally. He was intent on fixing the sixth worm on the hook in such fashion as permanently to discourage the bait thief, and was coming to his own in the matter of self-possession with grateful facility. It was going to be notably easy to bully her—another point of difference between her and Nan Bryerson.
"I know there isn't anybody holding me, but—but I can't find the way."
That any one could be lost within an easy mile of the manor-house was ridiculously incredible to Thomas Jefferson. Yet there was no telling, in the case of a girl.