“It ain’t no go, Bob, I tell ye,” continued Ransey Tansey, still shaking his finger. “Back to Babs, Bob—back to Babs. We can’t both on us leave the house at the same time.”
This latter argument was quite convincing, and back marched Bob, with drooping head and with that fag-end of a tail of his drooping earthwards also.
There grew on the top of the bank a solitary brown-stemmed pine-tree. Very, very tall it was, with not a branch all the way up save a very strong horizontal limb, which was used to hang people from in the happy days of old. The top of this tree was peculiar. It spread straight out on all sides, forming a kind of flat table of darkest green needled foliage. Had you been sketching this tree, then, after doing the stem, you could easily have rubbed in the top of it by dipping your little finger in ink and smudging the paper crosswise.
When not far from this gibbet-tree, as it was generally called, Ransey looked up and hailed,—
“Ship ahoy! Are ye on board, Admiral?”
And now a somewhat strange thing happened. No sooner had the boy hailed than down from a mass of central foliage there suddenly hung what, at first sight, one might have taken for a snake.
It was really a bird’s long neck.
“Craik—craik—crik—cr—cr—cray!”
“All right,” cried Ransey, as if he understood every word. “Ye mebbe don’t see nuthin’ o’ father, do ye?”
“Tok—tok—tok—cr—cray—ay!”