"They will dodge the brats, and put them out," he growled in his deepest tone: "after all the pains I meant to take to-day, the little things will be out in their Bibles, though they can say it all with me. The Faas and Draper will not be there, however; only the soberer sort of children."
He was mistaken. The gipsy pupils were present with the rest, and formed a part of the class which Matilda had collected around her, and whom she was now engaged in examining.
"Think of your running away yourself!" muttered Pim to his daughter. "Why could not you have sent the dame? There would have been no harm in her knowing where I was."
"She would hardly have hobbled there and back before dinner," replied Rebecca. "We have been very quick, and the ladies can't have got far."
They had got far enough to see that though the children had (in their own phrase) "got into the Bible," they had not (to use their master's) "got through it" with the understanding, whether or not they had with the tongue. The children Matilda was conversing with were all between ten and fifteen years of age, and therefore capable of giving intelligent answers about the patriarchal tale they had been reading, if about any part of the Bible whatever.
"What did they do next," she asked, "after determining where they should settle?"
"They pitched their tents before it grew dark."
"Do you know how a tent is pitched?"
"Yes, my lady; it is daubed all over with tar."
Uriah Faa, well-informed on this matter, set the mistake right.