“Shall I pitch this smock-frock thing into the stream?” said Perry, with a look of satisfaction at his companion.
“Throw it away? No. Perhaps your father will order me to keep it to wear, and make me give back your clothes.”
“I know my father better than that,” cried Perry warmly.
“But see how he went on at me last night, and how he’ll go on at me again to-day. I wish I hadn’t done it.”
“I’m glad you are come, Cil,” said Perry; “but it does seem a pity. Whatever made you do it?”
“I hardly know,” said the boy sadly. “I was so down in the dumps because I couldn’t come with you, and I did so long, for it seemed as if you were going to have all the fun, and I was to be left drudging away at home, where it was going to be as dull as dull without you. And then I got talking to Diego, and when he heard that I was not coming too, he said he should give it up. He wasn’t coming with three strangers, he said, for how did he know how people with plenty of guns and powder and shot would behave to him.”
“He said that?” cried Perry.
“Yes, and a lot more about it, and he wanted me to ask father again to let me come.”
“And did you?”
“No; where would have been the use? When father says a thing, he means it. Then Diego turned quite sulky, and I thought he was going to give up altogether. That was two days before you were going to start, and I begged him not to throw you over, and he said he wouldn’t if I came too; and when I told him my father wouldn’t let me, he said why not come without leave? And after a great deal of talking, in which he always had the best of me, because I wanted to do as he proposed, at last I said I would, and he got me the Indian dress and the bow and arrows.”