“Yes,” put in Dirck with energy,—“let twenty, or a hundred try it if they please, Anneke, men or boys, and they'll find those that will protect you.”
“You for one, of course, cousin Dirck,” rejoined the charming girl, holding out her hand towards my friend, with a frankness I could have dispensed with in her; “but, you will remember, Mr. Littlepage, or Master Littlepage as he then was, was a stranger, and I had no such claim on him, as I certainly have on you.”
“Well, Corny, it is odd you never said a word of this to me! when I was showing him Lilacsbush, and talking of you and of your father, not a word did he say on the subject.”
“I did not then know it was Miss Mordaunt I had been so fortunate as to serve; but here is Mr. Newcome at your elbow, Follock, and dying to be introduced, as he sees I have been.”
Anneke turned to smile and curtsey again to Jason, who made his bow in a very school-master sort of a fashion, while I could see that the circumstance I had not boasted of my exploit gave it new importance in the sweet creature's eyes. As for Jason, he had no sooner got along with the introduction,—the first, I fancy, he had ever gone regularly through,—than, profiting by some questions Miss Mordaunt was asking Dirck about his mother and the rest of the family, he came round to me, drew me aside by a jerk of the sleeve, and gave me to understand he had something for my private ear.
“I did not know before that you had ever kept school, Corny,” he half whispered earnestly.
“How do you know it now, Mr. Newcome? since the thing never happened?”
“How comes it, then, that this young woman called you Master Littlepage?”
“Bah! Jason, wait a year or two, and you will begin to get truer notions of us New Yorkers.”
“But I heard her with my own ears—Master Littlepage; as plain as words were ever called.”