“And my father says, the more opposition there is, the more he shall go on, for if people don’t know what’s good for them they’ve got to be taught. There’s a beauty!”
Dick went off in chase of a swallow-tail butterfly—one of the beautiful insects whose home was in the fens; but after letting him come very close two or three times, the brightly-marked creature fluttered off over the treacherous bog, a place of danger for followers, of safety for the insect.
“That’s the way they always serve you,” said Dick.
“Well, you don’t want it.”
“No, I don’t want it. Yes I do. Mr Marston said he should like a few more to put in his case. I say, they are getting on with the drain,” Dick continued, as he shaded his eyes and gazed at where, a mile away, the engineer’s men were wheeling peat up planks, and forming a long embankment on either side of the cutting through the fen.
“Can you see Mr Marston from here?”
“Why, of course not! Come along! I say, Tom, you didn’t think what old Hicky said was true, did you?”
“N–n–no. Of course not.”
“Why, you did. Ha—ha—ha! That’s what father and Mr Marston call superstition. I shall tell Mr Marston that you believe in will-o’-the-wisps.”
“Well, so do you. Who can help believing in them, when you see them going along over the fen on the soft dark nights!”