“Would you like to ride on my shoulder, Osy?”
Osy looked up to the high altitude of that shoulder with a look full of deliberation, weighing various things. “I s’ould like it,” he said, “but I felled off once when Cousin Gervase put me up, and I promised Movver: but I tan’t help it when he takes me by my arms behind me. Sometimes I’m fwightened myself. A gemplemans oughtn’t to be fwightened, s’ould he, Cousin Colonel?”
“That depends,” said Gerald. “I am a great deal bigger than you, but sometimes I have been frightened, too.”
Osy looked at the tall figure by his side with certain glimmerings in his eyes of contempt. That size! and afraid!—but he would not make any remark. One does not talk of the deficiencies of others when one is of truly gentle spirit. One passes them over. He apologised like a prince to Gerald for himself. “That would be,” he said, “when it was a big, big giant. There’s giants in India, I know, like Goliath. If I do to India when I’m a man, I’ll be fwightened, too.”
“But David wasn’t, you know, Osy.”
“That’s what I was finking, Cousin Colonel, but he flinged the stone at him before he tummed up to him. Movver says it was quite fair, but——”
“I think it was quite fair. Don’t you see, he had his armour on, and his shield, and all that; if he had had his wits about him, he might have put up his shield to ward off the stone. When you are little you must be very sharp.”
Osy looked at his big cousin again, reflectively. “I don’t fink I could kill you, Cousin Colonel, even if I was very sharp.”
“I hope not, Osy, and I trust you will never want to, my little man.”
“I would if we was fighting,” said Osy, with spirit; “but I’ll do on detting bigger and bigger till I’m a man: and you are a man now, and you tan’t gwow no more.”