"Let the poor little brute go, Basil," she said, laughing. "We've three flitted still."
"Let it go?" cried the young man scornfully, and with another poke, which I thought had crushed me to bits, though I was still able to cry aloud.
The gipsy girl turned her back and went away with one movement and without speaking.
"Sybil!" cried the man; but she did not look round.
"Sybil, I say!"
She was breaking sticks for the fire slowly across her knee, but she made no answer. He took his stick out of my back, and went after her.
"I've let it go," he said, throwing himself down again, "and a good dinner has gone with it. But you can do what you like with me—and small thanks I get for it."
"I can do anything with you but keep you out of mischief," she answered, fixing her eyes steadily on him. He sat up and began to throw stones, aiming them at my three cousins.
"Take me for good and all, instead of tormenting me, and you will," he said.
"Will you give up Jemmy and his gang?" she asked; but as he hesitated for an instant, she tossed the curls back from her face and moved away, saying, "Not you; for all your talk! And yet for your sake, I would give up—"