"Now, Miss Lilly, you're joking—you know you are," said Ferdy, looking up in her face with his sweet blue eyes—eyes that to the young girl's fancy looked very wistful that morning. He had stretched out his arms, and was clasping them round her neck. Ferdy was very fond of Miss Lilly. "Aren't you joking?" He wasn't quite, quite sure if she was, for sums were one of the few crooks in Ferdy's lot, and rather a sore subject.
Something in the tone of his voice made Miss Lilly kiss him again as she replied, "Of course I'm joking, my dear little matter-of-fact. No, your mamma says you are only to do your really favourite lessons for a week or two, and not those if they tire you. We are all going to spoil you, I'm afraid, my boy."
"I don't want to be spoilt," said Ferdy. "Chrissie and I have been talking. I want to make plans and be—be useful or some good to somebody, even if I have to stay in bed a good bit. What I most want to get out of bed for is to lie on the sofa and have the end of it pulled into the window, so that I can see along the roads all ways. Oh, Chrissie, you must tell Miss Lilly about the swallows, and—and—what was it I wanted to ask you?" He looked round, as if he were rather puzzled.
"Are you not talking too much?" said Miss Lilly, for the little fellow's eyes were very bright—too bright, she feared. "Chrissie dear, perhaps you can remember what Ferdy wanted to ask me about."
"Oh, I know," said Ferdy; "it was about Jesse Piggot. Chrissie, you ask."
"We saw you talking to him—at least I did—out of the window, and we wondered what it was about. They all say he's a very naughty boy, Miss Lilly."
"I know," Miss Lilly replied. "He's a Draymoor boy"—Draymoor was the name of the mining village that Ferdy had been thinking about on his birthday morning—"or rather he used to be, till his uncle there died."
"And now he lives at Farmer Meare's, where he works, but he's still naughty," said Chrissie, as if it was rather surprising that the having left off living at the black village had not made Jesse good at once.
Miss Lilly smiled.
"I don't think everybody at Draymoor is naughty," she said. "I think Jesse would have been a difficult boy to manage anywhere, though Draymoor isn't a place with much in the way of good example certainly. But I hope it's getting a little better. If one could get hold of the children." She sat silent for a moment or two, her eyes looking as if they saw scenes not there. "I know several of the miners' families who live nearer us than Draymoor—at Bollins, and there are some such nice children among them."