"Well, you wouldn't like to have him lug us off if you knew we'd got to go to the poorhouse, would you? 'Cause neither Louis nor me ever did anything to you, or to him either."
"But you sha'n't go there, my dear child. So long as I am willing to keep you here, I don't see what business it is of his, or anybody else's."
"It seems as though he was makin' it his business," Jack replied disconsolately; for he was now beginning to despair of persuading Aunt Nancy to tell a lie. "If you'd say we wasn't here, that would settle it, and he wouldn't stay."
"But I can't, Jack; I can't tell an absolute falsehood."
Jack gave vent to a long-drawn sigh as he looked toward the baby for a moment, and then said,—
"Well, I didn't s'pose you would do it anyhow, so Louis an' me'll have to start off, 'cause I won't go to that poor farm if I have to walk every step of the way to New York an' carry the baby besides."
"I don't see why you should talk like that, my child. In the first place, there is no reason for believing that hard-hearted man will come here, and—"
"Oh, yes, there is!" and Jack repeated the conversation he had overheard while hiding in the alder-bushes. "When he finds out we haven't been to Biddeford, he'll ask at every house on the way back."
"Do you really think he would try to take you if I said to him in a very severe tone that I would have him prosecuted for attempting anything of the kind?"
"I don't believe you could scare him a bit, an' there isn't much chance you'd be able to stop him after he's come so far to find us."