“What are you two boys plotting there?” snarled Slegge. “My ears are sharper than you think, and if you don’t want yours pulled you had better drop it.”
Little Burton dropped upon his knees, crouching down all of a heap and seeming to subside into the worn brown earth as he laid his forehead upon the ground, while Slegge seized the opportunity and rushed at him as if he were a football, delivering a heavy kick that sent the poor little fellow over.
“Serve you right!” cried Slegge, as the boy uttered a sharp cry of pain. “Now, go and yelp somewhere else. Let’s have none of your howlings here.”
But only a faint sob followed, while the little fellow rose with his teeth closely set and lips compressed, as he tried to stifle the cries that were struggling to escape, and then stood leaning against his nearest companion without uttering a sound.
“Look here, Burton,” sneered Slegge, “go and tell Severn, and ask him to come and lick me again. I am ready, and I’ll let him see.—Yes, you may look, Mr Burney, Esquire. I saw that letter yesterday you had from home. Esquire indeed! It’s sickening!—I am ready to have it out with him whenever he likes, and take the nigger after him when he’s had his gruel. Go and tell him if you like. It’s been dull enough in the place ever since that miserable imposture about the lost belt. You want something to rouse you up, and I’ll give it you if you can bring those two fellows up to the scratch; but that you can’t do. Look at them sneaking off like a street cur and an Indian jackal. Contemptible beasts! I only wish they would come back. I feel just in the humour now to give them what for. Yah!—Well, any of you going to fetch them back?”
“I’m not,” said Burney, shrugging his shoulders. And he turned half-away as if to go and lean against the fence, but really to hide his face as he muttered to himself, “Oh, shouldn’t I like to see you licked again!”
“Well, who’s going?” cried Slegge haughtily.—“No one?—Here, you, you snivelling little wretch,” he continued, turning to little Burton, “go, and tell that big bully Severn that I am waiting here to give him his dose, and that he’s to bring the nigger with him to have his lot when I have done with number one.—Yes, boys, I feel just in the humour for it, and I am going to cut both their combs.—Do you hear, Burton?”
The little fellow drew a long, deep breath, but he did not move.
“Do you hear what I say?” roared Slegge.
“Yes,” said the little fellow sturdily.