"To Hoddesdon, then. There, I hope you're happier for the information."
"Not happier; no, Lawrence," she answered very slowly. "Wait a bit now," she went on, as he laid aggressive hands on the basket. "To Hoddesdon! What for?"
"Oh, come now, that's not in the bond. Why, nothing; nothing, little woman, that you know anything about."
"But I want to know," insisted she, still valiantly protecting the basket's most vulnerable points; "that's just it, I want to know."
"Then want must be your master," he said angrily. "Little girls must not know everything," he added, mending his rude speech, and seizing basket, and Ruth, and all in his arms.
"I'm not a little girl any longer," she cried, struggling to free herself, and digging her pink nails ever so hard into his bronzed wrists, till he decided to loosen his hold.
"No, you're a little wild kitten, with the sharpest claws in the world; that's what you are," he said; "but it won't do, I'm master."
A bitter secret.
"'Tis no good you're going to Hoddesdon for," she said bluntly, looking up into his laughing eyes, "or you'd tell me when I ask you, without all this silly nonsense. You never kept a secret from me before, Lawrence."
"Perhaps I never had one to keep."