“Should you be afraid, David?”
“Not—I think—with Luke. We are to be in the same room, mother.”
But Mrs. Hill noticed that his voice was hesitating; his small weak hand trembled in hers. There was not a more morally brave heart than David Garth’s; he had had a religious training; but at being alone in the dark he was a very coward, afraid of ghosts and goblins.
“Hill,” said she to her husband when he stamped in, the lad having gone to wash his hands, “I cannot let David sleep in the other house to-night. He will be too timid.”
“Timid!” repeated Hill, staring at the words. “Why, Luke Macintosh will be with him.”
“David won’t like it. Macintosh is nothing but a coward himself.”
“Don’t thee be a fool, and show it,” returned Hill, roughly. “Thee’ll keep that boy a baby for his life. Davvy would as soon sleep in the house alone, as not, but for the folly put into his head by you. And why not? He’s fourteen.”
Hill—to give him his due—only spoke as he thought. That any one in the world, grown to fourteen and upwards, could be afraid of sleeping in a house alone, was to him literally incomprehensible.
“I said he must go over to Worcester to see mother, James,” she meekly resumed; “you know I did.”