'I hate him. We were twice as pleasant with poor Tom Driver—he never meddled with any one, and was always in liquor; Old Gin was the name he went by. But this brute—I do hate him—he comes from Wigan, I think, and he's always spoiling sport—and he whops Meg—that's Beauty, you know, and I don't think she'd be half as bad only for him. Listen to him whistlin'.'
'I did hear whistling at some distance among the trees.'
'I declare if he isn't callin' the dogs! Climb up here, I tell ye,' and we climbed up the slanting trunk of a great walnut tree, and strained our eyes in the direction from which we expected the onset of Pegtop's vicious pack.
But it was a false alarm.
'Well, I don't think he would do that, after all—hardly; but he is a brute, sure!'
'And that dark girl who would not let us through, is his daughter, is she?'
'Yes, that's Meg—Beauty, I christened her, when I called him Beast; but I call him Pegtop now, and she's Beauty still, and that's the way o't.'
'Come, sit down now, an' make your picture,' she resumed so soon as we had dismounted from our position of security.
'I'm afraid I'm hardly in the vein. I don't think I could draw a straight line. My hand trembles.'
'I wish you could, Maud,' said Milly, with a look so wistful and entreating, that considering the excursion she had made for the pencils, I could not bear to disappoint her.