“Oh, all right,” I said, after a good-humoured struggle with him, in which I did not use much force, and I let him shut the bin, and sit on the lid.
Dinner!
For the bell began to ring, and I dashed down, to run out of the stable and across the yard, expecting that he would follow me, and running so blindly that I came right upon Dicksee, just leaving the stable door, and sent him down upon his hands and knees.
“Hallo!” I shouted; “what were you doing there?—listening?”
“What’s that to you?” grumbled the boy, as he rose slowly and carefully, examining his hands to see if the skin was off. “You did that on purpose.”
“No, I didn’t,” I replied; “but I would have done it, if I had known you were sneaking and eavesdropping there.”
“Who was sneaking and eavesdropping? What was there to listen to?” he retorted. “’Tain’t your stable. I’ve as good a right there as you have. Tom Mercer and you ain’t going to have it all to yourselves for your old slugs and snails and dead cats.”
“You mind Tom Mercer doesn’t catch you,” I said. “You don’t want him to lick you again, I know.”
“Yah!” he shouted, and he ran off just as my companion came down.
“Who was that?” he said.