“Beat him,” said Tiza, looking up at Mr. Norton with her quick birdlike eyes.
“Oh dear, no!” said Mr. Norton, “that wouldn’t do my dinner any good. I should eat him up instead.”
“I don’t believe little boys taste good a bit,” said Olly, who always believed firmly in his father’s various threats. “If you ettened me, father, you’d be ill.”
“Oh no,” said Mr. Norton, “not if I eat you with plenty of bread-sauce. That’s the best way to cook little boys. Now, Milly, which of you three girls can get to that gate first?”
Off ran the three little girls full tilt down the hill leading to Ravensnest, with Olly puffing and panting after them. Milly led the way at first, for she was light and quick, and a very fair runner for her age; but Tiza soon got up to her and passed her, and it was Tiza’s little stout legs that arrived first at Ravensnest gate.
“Oh, Becky!” said Milly, putting her arm round Becky’s neck as they went into the house together, “I hope you may stay a good long time. What time do you go to bed?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Becky. “We go when fayther goes.”
“When fayther goes!” exclaimed Milly. “Why, we go ever so long before father. Why do you stay up so late?”
“Why, it isn’t late,” said Becky. “Fayther goes to bed, now it’s summertime, about half-past eight; but in winter, of course, he goes earlier. And we all goes together, except baby. Mother puts him out of the way before supper.”
“Well, but how funny,” said Milly, “I can’t think why you should be so different from us.”