“She must have great faith,” remarked Bessie, meditatively. “If I had been here, Harry, I should have taken you down to the pond and given you a ducking on my own responsibility.”
“I shouldn’t have cared if you had drowned me, then,” retorted Harry. “There was not one of them would speak to me, and Alick would not let even Leonard come and say a word to me; and I was so miserable, I often thought of going out at night and throwing myself into the water, and that I knew would vex them all—only I was afraid of crossing the fields by myself in the dark;” and at the bare recollection of his fear and trouble, Harry began to whimper.
“If you had done that, you know,” said Bessie, coolly, “you would have been buried at the four cross-roads on the way to South Kemms, with a stake through your body.”
“I should not have minded what was done to me when once I was dead,” said Harry, philosophically.
“If you do not mind what you are about while you are living,” answered Bessie, “you will come to the gallows.”
“No more likely to come to the gallows than you, Miss Impudence, for all your red-and-white face and shiny hair, that you think so much of;” and Harry put out his tongue as far as he could thrust it at Bessie, who, without “more ado,” to appropriate an expression from Priscilla’s letter, walked round the table, and would have boxed the offender’s ears but that he disappeared from his chair and dived among the feet of the four Dudleys, one of whom, Cuthbert, was not slow about availing himself of the tempting opportunity thus offered.
“You’re a coward,” said the boy, reappearing on the other side with a very red face, and his hair all in a tangle, looking, as Laura said, like one of those things chimneys are swept with. “You’re a coward, to kick a man when he’s down. Come on, and fight it out.”
“You had better behave yourself, Harry,” answered Cuthbert, “or I will give you toko for yam,” which mysterious threat evidently conveyed some definite idea to Master Marsden’s mind, for he answered:—
“You could not, nor two like you.”
“Shall I try?” asked Cuthbert, rising; but Harry fled towards the door, and Agnes ended the quarrel by bringing the boy back to the table and seating him in his place, and warning both him and Cuthbert that they must not make a noise—that the doctor had said the house was to be kept as still and quiet as possible. “So, Harry,” continued his sister, “do be good for once in your life; finish your tea and go to bed.”