“I was obliged to shy them at the pig to save my breakfast. Thank you,” he continued, as she laughingly picked up a shoe on the end of the stick and passed it up. “Now the other. Thanks,” he added, dropping them inside his prison. “Now I want that milk.”
As Adela picked up the jug the sailor dropped back after his shoes, put them on, ran to his straw bed, munching away the while, and drew out the cord that had been used to bind his legs.
“How useful a bit of line always is!” he muttered as he climbed back to the window-sill, held on with one arm through the bars, and took another tremendous bite from the bread, nodding pleasantly the while at his old friend.
“Why, Hil, how hungry you must have been!” she said. “Let me run and get some butter.”
“How hungry I am, you mean,” he said. “Addy, dear, I feel now just like what wolves must feel when they eat little children and old women. I’ll never speak disrespectfully of a wolf again. Why, I could have eaten you.”
“Oh, what nonsense!”
“I don’t know so much about that,” he said; “but never mind about the butter; let me have some of that milk. Look here, tie one end of this cord round the handle of the jug, and then I’ll haul it up.”
He lowered down one end of the cord and watched her carefully, munching busily the while, as she cleverly tied the end to the jug handle, and then held the vessel of milk up so that he should not have so far to haul.
“Steady,” said Hilary, with his mouth unpleasantly full; and he softly drew the cord tight, but only to find that the want of balance would pull the jug so much on one side that half the milk would be spilled.
“That won’t do,” he said; “and I can’t wait for you to tie the cord afresh; besides, I don’t think you could do it right. I say, Addy, drink some of it, there’s a good girl; it would be a pity to spill any.”