Betty's smile was radiant with secret exultation and pride.
"Not a baby a bit, Jack, but a jolly brave little nipper who can be trusted to look after any little girl left to his care. Eva will be chums with you after this you may be quite sure, and Eva's mother will feel sure that she will come to no harm with you."
She felt Jack fully deserved this amount of praise, but at the farm very little more was said about the adventure.
"I should hate him to be made into a sort of hero though he is one," she said to Jack's grandmother. "There is not one little boy in a hundred that would have kept his head and known what to do."
So Jack went about the rest of the day a little whiter and quieter than usual, but when night came, and Aunt Betty had tucked him into bed after hearing him say his prayers, he showed some reluctance to let her go, and for once she humoured him and sat down by him for a few minutes.
"It seems—as if something were rushing at me," he said, half ashamed to voice his imaginings.
"There's nothing rushing at you really. It's a trick your tired head is playing on you," said Betty soothingly.
"A great big head with horns and eyes that burn," went on Jack, "a giant's head."
Betty laughed, such a happy contented laugh. "If a giant at all, Jack, it was like one of the giants father told you about. You frightened the big head more than it frightened you. Such a funny thing to do! to throw a bag of flour at the bullock; throwing dust in its eyes with a vengeance, and by the time it got over its surprise it turned round and thought better of it and went back again."
It all sounded so simple and wholesome, that Jack joined in Aunt Betty's laughter.