"So off I goes like a shot, and here I am."
"You've told Mother Sophie?"
"Oh yes, and she and Pelagie set to work to make coffee for Marie. It would be tea if we was in England. My eye! Shouldn't I like a good cup of tea again!"
"Well now," said Phil, sitting down again to his work, "what do you think of doin' about that child?"
"I give it up; ask me another," replied Tad, half vexed, half laughing. "Blest if I know what to do! I want to get back to England, and yet I can't go home without the child, and—"
"But you won't steal him, will you, Tad?" questioned Phil very earnestly.
"I don't know about that," replied Tad, "can't promise. 'Taint likely Marie 'll give up the little chap of her own free will, just when she's got used to him and all. No, Phil, nor I don't see no great harm neither, in takin' him away. He ain't no property of hers. She stole him, and it would only be givin' her tit for tat."
"My mother used to say two wrongs don't make a right, Tad, and after all it wasn't Marie who stole him first of all. It was you."
"But I never meant to keep him, you see; I was a-goin' to take him home when I'd given his mother one for herself."
"Tad, listen to me," said Phil; "you've been so nice and good and dear this long while now, and always done things I asked you, even when they was hard. Now do promise me, dear old chap, that you won't do nothin' but what's quite straightforward and honest." And Phil looked up in the elder boy's face with that wistful entreaty in his eyes which Tad had always found it hard to resist.