Anna laughed even more scornfully. "No, I will not," she said loftily. "I am not quite stupid enough to believe all the nonsense you would like to make me."
"If you could only realize it, it is you who are talking nonsense," said Dan crushingly, and he turned away from her. He was not going to tell any of his beloved legends and stories for Anna to sneer at. "It is simply a sign of ignorance," he said, with his most superior air, "not to believe in things because we haven't actually seen them with our very own eyes. I suppose you will not believe that St. Michael's Mount used to be surrounded with woods where there is sea now, until a huge wave rushed in and swamped everything, right up to the foot of the Mount, and never went back again?"
"No," said Anna obstinately, "of course I shouldn't believe it.
Such things couldn't happen. It is silly to tell such stories as you
Cornish people do, and expect other people to believe them."
Kitty looked at her in pained surprise. It seemed to her that Anna's way of speaking was quite irreverent. She longed to know, yet shrank from asking her, if she scorned, too, those other stories, so precious and real to Kitty, the story of King Arthur in his hidden resting-place, waiting to be roused from his long sleep; of Tristram and Iseult asleep in the little chapel beneath the sea; of—oh, a hundred others of giants and fairies, witches and spectres. But she held her peace rather than hear them scoffed at and discredited.
The sunshine, chased by a cloud and a fresh little breeze, disappeared.
Anna shivered and looked about her.
"Oh, how gloomy and lonely it all looks directly the sun goes in!" she cried. "I should hate to be here in the dark, or in a storm. Shouldn't you, Kitty? I think I should die of fright; I know I should if I were here alone."
"I'd love to be here in a storm," said Kitty firmly, "a real thunderstorm. It would be grand to watch it all from the top of the tors. I don't think I would very much mind being up here all night either. You see, there is nothing that could possibly hurt one, no wild beasts or robbers. Bad people would be afraid to come."
"I think it would be perfectly dreadful," shuddered Anna. "You would never know who was coming round the rocks, or who was hiding; and robbers could come behind you and catch you, and you wouldn't be able to see or hear them until they were right on you; and you might scream and scream with all your might and main and no one would hear you."
"If I sneered at giants, I wouldn't talk of robbers if I were you," said
Dan severely. "Imagine robbers coming to a place like this!
Why, there's nothing and nobody to rob."
"They would come here to hide, of course, not to rob," said Anna crushingly, and Dan felt rather small.