“Why isn’t it your father playing a trick?”
“Him couldn’t play um trick if him try. No, Mass’ George, him nebber play trick. It somefing dreffle. Come ’way.”
“Well, we were going back,” I said, feeling rather ashamed of my eagerness to get away, and still half uneasy about the gun, as I looked up at the tree where we had slept to see if I had left it there.
No; that was impossible, because I had had it to shoot the ducks. But still I might have put it somewhere else, and forgotten what I had done.
I turned away unwillingly, and yet glad, if that can be understood, and with Pomp leading first, we began our retreat as nearly as possible over the ground by which we had come.
For some little distance we went on in silence, totally forgetting the object of our journey; but as we got more distant from the scene of our last adventure, Pomp left off running into bushes and against trees in spite of my warnings, for he had been progressing with his head screwed round first on one side then on the other to look behind him, doing so much to drive away such terror as I felt by his comical aspect, that I ended by roaring with laughter.
“Oh, Mass’ George,” he said, reproachfully, “you great big foolish boy, or you no laugh like dat all. You done know what am after us.”
“No,” I said; “but I know we lost one of our guns, and father will be very cross. There, don’t walk quite so fast.”
“But Pomp want to run,” he said, pitifully.
“And we can’t run, because of the bushes and trees. I don’t think there was anything to be afraid of, after all.”