"Come, boy, we gotter fix up this yer openin' somehow."
Bud answered irrelevantly:
"Ah wisht Ah was certain about M'lissy."
Pressley let fly the bush that he was bending across the mouth of the cave.
"What about her?" he asked, sharply.
"Oh, everythin'!"
Explanation was difficult to his slowness of thought.
"She'll be wonderin' what takes me away from home so much at night; an' Ah don' much like to leave her alone, neither."
"Cain' ye trust her?" jeered Pink, with an evil scowl, but Bud turned on him so fiercely that he added, hastily,—"to keep still if ye tell her?"
"Tell her? Tell M'lissy! Ah wouldn' tell her fo' a good deal! You-all don' know M'lissy."