"Straight home," replied Gabriel.
"Well, I'm going there, too. I heard Nonny" (this was Mrs. Absalom) "say that Margaret Gaither has come home again, and then I remembered that your grandmother promised to tell me a story about her some day. I'm going to tease her to-day until she tells it."
"And didn't Mrs. Absalom tell you that Bethune was in the waggon with Mr. Sanders?" Gabriel inquired, in some astonishment.
"Oh, Gabriel! you are so—" Nan paused as if hunting for the right term or word. Evidently she didn't find it, for she turned to Gabriel with a winning smile, and asked what Mr. Sanders had had to say. "I'm so glad he's come I don't know what to do. I wouldn't live in a town that didn't have its Mr. Sanders," she declared.
"Well, about the first thing he said was to remind Bethune of the time when you whacked him over the head with a cudgel."
"And what did Master Francis say to that?" inquired Nan, with a laugh.
"Why, what could he say? He simply turned red. Now, if it had been me, I——"
The path was so narrow, that Nan, the two lads, and Tasma Tid were walking in Indian file. Nan stopped so suddenly and unexpectedly that Gabriel fell against her. As he did so, she turned and seized him by the arm, and emphasised her words by shaking him gently as each was uttered. "Now—Gabriel—don't—say—disagreeable—things!"
What she meant he had not the least idea, and it was not the first nor the last time that his wit lacked the nimbleness to follow and catch her meaning.
"Disagreeable!" he exclaimed. "Why, I was simply going to say that if I had been in Bethune's shoes to-day, I should have declared that you did the proper thing."