Samuel took no notice of her. He addressed his remarks to Patsy.
"Anybuddy could chate them, but I'm thinkin' it'd be the divil's own job to chate yerself," he said flatteringly.
Patsy smiled. "Don't you try it on, that's all," he said.
"Do ye think I want another batin'?" Samuel grinned. He stayed, and played with them all afternoon, in spite of Jane's plain-spoken requests for him to be off. Before he left he had a good tea in the kitchen, and got sixpence from Lull, who had a tender heart for the poor. After that he came frequently. He said his mother was dying, and wrung Lull's heart by his tales of the poor woman's sufferings. Jane noticed, and did not fail to point out, that grief never spoilt his appetite for pears. Now and then Samuel would silence her by a wild fit of weeping. Patsy got angry with Jane for her cruelty.
"Let the poor wee soul alone, an' quit yer naggin' at him," he said one day, when Jane's repeated hints had made Samuel throw himself on the grass to cry.
"I wisht I believed he was tellin' no lies," was Jane's answer.
Lull agreed with Patsy that Jane was too suspicious.
"No good iver comes to them that's hasky with the poor," she told Jane. Lull was Samuel's best friend. Every time he came she gave him something for his dying mother. There was one thing the children did not like about Samuel: he never seemed to be content with what he got. He begged for more and more, till even Patsy was ashamed of him. One evening he grumbled because Lull had only given him a penny. He had had a good tea, and his pockets were lined with apples to eat on the way home.
"It's hardly worth my while comin' if that's all I'm going to get," he said.
"Then don't be troublin' yerself to come anymore," said Jane; "we'll niver miss ye."