‘You will come home straight, Jim, and get to work again as soon as you return?’
‘Of course, sir,’ said Jim, opening large eyes, as if he had never departed from his word in his life. ‘Of course, when I say it I will do it. If you would but learn that it is the best thing to trust a fellow,’ he said, looking at the Rector with a grieved disappointment which quite outdid Mr. Plowden’s sentiments of the same kind. The poor Rector could not restrain a laugh as the young man hurried out of the room, leaving Sophocles just ready to topple over, on the very edge of the table; but it was not a cheerful laugh: though, perhaps, there was the chance that little Mab, if she had only been a little prettier—— Prettiness, however, as he knew, is not the only thing that matters in things of this kind.
‘You little brick!’ cried Jim, as they hurried along. ‘I owe you one for that. What put it into your little head to come and get me off to-day? for I was at the end of my patience, and could not think of any excuse to get away.’
‘What should you have done, Jim, if I had not come? read your Greek?’
‘Not if I know it,’ said Jim. ‘I should just have cut and run, excuse or no excuse. A fellow can’t be shut up all the afternoon, and the sun shining. It’s cruelty to animals. The old Pater has forgotten that he was ever young.’
‘But you will keep your promise, Jim, and go back and learn up your Greek?’
‘Oh, we’ll see about that. Let’s get our pull first. Oh, there’s Flo! I thought you and I were going alone.’
‘It was Florry who wanted you to come,’ said Mab, with the frankness of extreme youth, ‘not me. I like to do the pulling myself.’
‘You shall if you like,’ he said. ‘I’m not fond of trouble. And it’s not much fun you know, after all, to go out with your sister and your cousin. It’s too much bread and butter. If I’d known that Flo was in it I shouldn’t have come.’
‘You can go back if you please—to your Greek.’