“I want to go out too,” said Tommy.
“To see what you can pick up, I suppose?”
“That’s my business.”
“I fancy it mine while you are with me. If you don’t take care of baby and be good to her, I’ll put you in the water-butt I took her out of—as sure as you ain’t in it now!”
“That you shan’t!” cried Tommy; “I’ll bite first!”
“I’ll tie your hands and feet, and put a stick in your mouth,” said Clare. “So you’d better mind.”
“I want to go with you!” whimpered Tommy.
“You can’t. You’re to stop and look after baby. I won’t be away longer than I can help; you may be sure of that.”
With repeated injunctions to him not to leave the room, Clare went.
Before going quite, however, he must arrange for returning. To swarm up between the two walls as he had done before, would be to bid good-bye to his jacket at least, and he knew how appearances were already against him. Spying about for whatever might serve his purpose, he caught sight of an old garden-roller, and was making for it, when Tommy, never doubting he was gone, came whistling round the corner of the house with his hands in his pocket-holes, and an impudent air of independence. Clare away, he was a lord in his own eyes! He could kill the baby when he pleased! Plainly his mood was, “He thinks I’m going to do as he tells me! Not if I knows it!” Clare saw him before he saw Clare, and rushed at him with a roar.