“Nor yet um forn?”
“No. Come along, you little unbeliever. Come along.”
“I serb you out fo dat, Mass’ George, you see,” he said, sidling back to the tree, watching me cautiously the while.
“Oh, very well, I’ll forgive you,” I said, as he retook his place. “I say, Pomp, I am thirsty.”
“So ’m I, Mass’ George. Dat lunchum?”
“Yes; that’s lunch,” I said, as I laid the neatly-done-up napkin containing provision of some kind on the tree-trunk between us, and taking out the tin can I leaned right back, gripping the tree with both legs, and lowering my hand I dipped the vessel full of water.
I was just in the act of rising cautiously and very slowly, when a sharp pain in the fleshy part of my leg made me spring forward in agony, dashing the water in Pomp’s face, knocking the wallet and its contents over sidewise, and in my pain and rage I seized the boy to begin cuffing him, while he wrestled with me to get away, as we hugged and struggled like two fighting men in a mêlée on the same horse.
“How dare you!” I panted; “that was the point of your knife. I’ll teach you to—Oh, murder!”
“Oh, Mass’ George, don’t! Oh! Oh! Oh!”
We both made a bound together, went off the trunk sidewise, and Pomp struggled up, tore off his shirt and drawers, and began to beat and shake them, and then peep inside, pausing every moment to have a rub; while I, without going to his extreme, was doing the best I could to rid myself of my pain.