"O Fanny, you are cruel," sighed Dan. "I really don't know," with a very good imitation of a catch in his voice, "how you can say to me the nasty things you do."
"Ah!" said Fanny, with a knowing shake of her head. "I may be cruel, and I have my failings, but I can read you through and through, Master Dan, same as if you was a printed book. You take my word for that."
"X rays aren't in it," cried Dan. "Eyes of a hawk, and a heart of stone. What a combination!"
"That there littlest basket," went on Fanny, turning to Kitty, "is for Master Tony; and you must see that Master Dan don't get hold of it, and let his little brother wear hisself out carrying the 'eavy one."
"Fanny, what do you take me for?"
"I take 'ee for what you are," said Fanny calmly—"an anointed young limb, and as artful as you are high."
"Wait till I have gone back to school," said Dan wistfully, "then every cruel and unjust thing you have said and thought of me will come back to you, and 'Too late, ah, too late,' you will moan as you sob yourself ill; 'and I loved that boy better than any one in the whole wide world!'"
Which had enough of truth in it to make Fanny quite cross, or seem to be.
"Master Tony's basket has got some lunch in it for you all to eat on your way. There's a little pasty each, and some biscuits. I did put in a big one for Master Dan, but I've more'n half a mind to take it out again, seeing as he's be'aving so, sitting on the table and swinging his legs. I s'pose those are the manners they learns him to school!"
Dan chuckled. "I wish they did," he said. "No, it's only you who let me behave myself as I like, Fanny. No one else in the wide world is so kind to me. O Fanny, I wish you were coming with us."