But Miss Esmé, as was her way, got very tired of handing Den the nails and tools and things he wanted, and of watching his rather slow progress, and told him she must really go for a run.
'All right,' said Denzil; 'but don't go far.'
He told us this part of it himself, when he came in for some blame in having 'let' Esmé' get into mischief. This sounds rather hard upon him, doesn't it, considering he was fully a year younger than she? but, as I have explained, he was such a solemn old sober-sides, that we had all got into the way of treating him as if he were the responsible one of the two.
'No,' Esmé replied, she would not go far; nor did she.
She strolled about—I can see her now as she must have looked that afternoon—her hands behind her back, her black legs—she was a tall little girl for her age—showing rather long and thin beneath her big, brown Holland overall, her garden hat tilted very much to the back, her lovely goldy hair in a great fuzz as usual, and her bright hazel eyes peering about for something to amuse herself with.
As ill-luck would have it, she found the 'something' in the shape of my poor darling Roughie!
Hoskins had allowed him to go out with a bone to the front of the Hut, where he was lying very comfortably in the sunshine, on a mat, which he considered his own property. He had left off nibbling at the bone, and was half or three-quarters asleep.
Now when Esmé is—no, I must in fairness say 'was,' she is so different now—in one of her idle yet restless humours, it irritated her somehow to see any one else peaceful and quiet, even if the some one else was only a dog.
'You lazy little beggar,' she said to Rough. I don't really know that she said those very words, but I am sure it was something of the kind, and so I think I may 'draw on my imagination' a little in telling the story. 'You lazy little beggar, why don't you get up and go for a run? You are getting far too fat.'