“Please, please, Wanza—”
“Stop! I will ask a few questions, myself. I will put them to you, although I never—in loyalty to you—put them to myself. But it is not for you to tell me how to behave—how to walk so and so—say and do so and so! This is the question I will put: Is it right for you to spend each and every day at Hidden Lake? Is it? Answer that to yourself—not to me—before you tell me not even to speak civilly to Mrs. Batterly’s husband. I don’t want to speak to him! I don’t want him to speak to me! No, nor look at me. Can you say as much for her, David Dale?”
“I don’t know what to say,” I stammered, taken by surprise.
“You don’t have to say nothing—not to me. I’m not your judge. But answer the questions to yourself, quick, before you tell me what to do and what not, again! Go on, Rosebud, you’re a-getting to be slower and slower!”
I glanced at her face. It was pale, and her lips were unsteady.
About this time Joey began to take sudden trips down the river in the flat-bottomed swift-water boat, poling away industriously each morning with a fine show of mystery—unconsciously admonishing me to appear indifferent and uninterested. I carried my apathy too far, I imagine, for one day he said to me:
“Mr. David, do you mind the old hollow stump in the willows on the river bank—where the flycatcher’s left a funny big nest?”
I answered yes. I had marked it well. The secret waterway which led to Hidden Lake was close by.
“Well,” Joey continued, looking very important, and puffing out his chest like a pouter pigeon, “Bell Brandon and me have a post-office there. She leaves the most things for me there under the flycatcher’s nest in a box—cut-out pictures, and cookies, and fludge.”
“Fudge, Joey boy.”