He ran down the slopes of heather towards home as though he would catch and question Mr. Ancrum there and then. And Louie? Patience! He would settle everything. Meanwhile, he was regretfully persuaded that if you had asked Miss Bronte what could be done with a creature like Louie she would have had a notion or two.
CHAPTER VIII
'Reach me that book, Louie,' said David peremptorily; 'it ull be worse for yo if yo don't.'
The brother and sister were in the smithy. Louie was squatting on the ground with her hands behind her, her lips sharply shut as though nothing should drag a word out of them, and her eyes blazing defiance at David, who had her by the shoulder, and looked to the full as fierce as she looked provoking.
'Find it!' was all she said. He had been absent for a few minutes after a sheep that had got into difficulties in the Red Brook, and when he returned, his volume of Rollin's 'Ancient History'—'Lias's latest loan—which he had imprudently forgotten to take with him, had disappeared.
David gave her an angry shake, on which she toppled over among the fallen stones with an exasperating limpness, and lay there laughing.
'Oh, very well,' said David, suddenly recovering himself; 'yo keep yor secret. I'st keep mine, that's aw.'
Louie lay quiet a minute or two, laughing artificially at intervals, while David searched the corners of the smithy, turning every now and then to give a stealthy look at his sister.
The bait took. Louie stopped laughing, sat up, put herself straight, and looked about her.
'Yo hain't got a secret,' she said coolly; 'I'm not to be took in wi snuff that way.'