'Oh, but that was silly. Besides, I wasn't alone—I was with Jack all day. And if I had been alone, I can take care of myself—I shall be twelve next birthday. Nobody would try to steal me now,' said Vernon, drawing himself up and swaggering a little.
'What, not even good Mrs. Brown? Well, no; I think you are too clever to be stolen. Still you must not go out again without Robert.' (Robert was a youth of two-and-twenty, Sir Vernon's body-guard and particular attendant, to whom the little baronet occasionally gave the go-by.) 'Besides, I don't think you ought to associate with such a person as this Cheap Jack—a vagabond stroller, whose past life nobody knows.'
'Oh, but you don't know what kind of man Jack is—he's the cleverest man I ever knew—cleverer than Mr. Jardine; he knows everything. Let's go up on the hanger.'
'No, dear, it's getting late; we must go home.'
'No, we needn't go home till we like—nobody wants us. Mamma will be asleep over her knitting,—how she does sleep!—and she'll wake up surprised when we go home, and say, "Gracious, is it ten o'clock? These summer evenings are so short!"'
'But you ought to be in bed, Vernie.'
'No, I oughtn't. The thrushes haven't gone to bed yet. Hark at that one singing his evening hymn! Do come just a wee bit further.'
They were at the foot of the hanger by this time, and now began to climb the slope. The atmosphere was balmy with the breath of the pines, and there was an almost tropical warmth in the wood—languorous, inviting to repose. The crescent moon hung pale above the tops of the trees, pale above that rosy flush of evening which filled the western sky.
'What makes you think Jack so clever?' inquired Ida, more for the sake of sustaining the conversation than from any personal interest in the subject.
'Oh, because he knows everything. He told me all about Macbeth, the witches, don't you know, and the ghost, and Mrs.—no, Lady Macbeth—walking in her sleep, and then he made my flesh creep—worse than you do when you talk about ghosts. And then he told me about Agamemnon, the same that's in Homer. I haven't begun Greek yet, but Mr. Jardine told me about him and Cly—Cly—what's her name?—his wife. And then he told me about Africa and the black men, and about India, and tiger-hunts, and snakes, and the great mountains where there are tribes of wild monkeys;—I should so like to have a monkey, Ida! Can I have a monkey? And he told me about South America, just as if he had been there and seen it all.'