There was another sharp poke, a painful poke, against which, as he moved to the other end of the seat, Dexter uttered a mild protest.
“Did you hear me say, ‘Get up’?” shouted Edgar.
Dexter obeyed, and moved a little nearer to the water’s edge.
“I wish it was time to go,” he said to himself. “I am so miserable here.”
“Now, go along there,” said Edgar sharply. “Go on!”
The boy seemed to have a donkey in his mind’s eye just then, for he thrust and struck at Dexter savagely, and then hastily threw down the stick, as an angry glow was gathering in his visitor’s countenance. For just then there was a step heard upon the gravel.
“Ah, Eddy, my darling,” said a voice; and Lady Danby walked languidly by, holding up a parasol. “At play, my dear?”
She did not glance at Dexter, who felt very solitary and sad as the lady passed on, Master Eddy throwing himself on the grass, and picking it off in patches to toss toward the water till his mother was out of sight, when he sprang up once more, and picked the stick from where he had thrown it upon a bed.
As he did this he glanced sidewise, and then stood watching for a few minutes, when he made a playful kind of charge at his visitor, and drove the point of the stick so vigorously against his back that the cloth gave way, making a triangular hole, and causing the owner no little pain.
“Don’t,” cried Dexter appealingly; “you hurt ever so. Let’s play at some game.”