“Bother the chap! we don’t want him here.”
Pe-au, pe-au, came a wailing whistle through the open window.
“Ah, I hear you, old whaupie, but I can do it better than that,” said Kenneth to himself, as he repeated the whistle, in perfect imitation of the curlews which abounded near.
The whistle was answered, and, with a good-tempered smile on his face, Kenneth rose from the table, after cutting another slice of bread, and laying it upon that in his plate, so as to form a sticky sandwich.
“Scood!” he cried from the window, and barelegged Scoodrach, who was seated upon a rock right below, with the waves splashing his feet, looked up and showed his white teeth.
“Catch!”
“All right.”
Down went the bread and marmalade, which the lad caught in his blue worsted bonnet, and was about to replace the same upon his curly red head, but the glutinous marmalade came off on one finger. This sticky finger he sucked as he stared at the bread, and, evidently coming to the conclusion that preserve and pomade were not synonymous terms, he began rapidly to put the sweet sandwich somewhere else.
“I wish you had kept it in your bonnet, Scood.”
The boy looked up and laughed, his mouth busy the while.