“Yerse; ’course I will,” cried Pete, snatching the piece, spitting on it, and thrusting it into his pocket. “Thought your sort allus telled the truth.”
“Well, so we do,” said Tom, smiling.
“None o’ yer lies now, ’cause it won’t do with me,” said the fellow menacingly. “Yer said yer warn’t afeard, and yer are. All in a funk, that’s what yer are: so now then.”
“No, I’m not,” said Tom, in the coolest way possible, for he had made up his mind to try and carry out the Vicar’s plan.
“I tell yer yer are. What yer got here? Yer wouldn’t ha’ give me sixpence to let yer alone if yer hadn’t been afeard. What yer got here, I say?”
“You can see,” said Tom, without showing the slightest resentment at the handle of his basket being seized, even though Pete, in perfect assurance that he was frightening his enemy into fits, grew more and more aggressive.
“Yes, I can see,” cried Pete. “I’ve got eyes in my head, same as you chaps as come from London, and think yerselves so precious sharp. Yer’ve no right to come down and pick what’s meant for poor people. Give ’em here.”
He wrenched the basket from Tom’s arm, and scattered its contents away amongst the furze-bushes, sending the basket after them.
“There, that’s what you’ll get if yer comes picking and stealing here. How d’yer like that, young blunt ’un?”
“Not at all,” said Tom, who looked very white, and felt a peculiar tingling about the corners of his lips and in his temples.