Mrs. Taylor shook her head sadly. "Yer Papa would be sorry to think ye read about sich people."
"Haw!" cried Buff, "it was Father read it to me himself—didn't he Lizbeth?—and he laughed—he laughed about him fighting the hundred men."
They had come to the end of the street where the Taylors lived, and they all stopped for a minute, Buff flushed and triumphant, Mrs. Taylor making the bugles of her Sabbath bonnet shake with disapproval, and Mr. Taylor still brimful of humour.
"It's as well we're leavin' this bloodthirsty young man, Mrs. Taylor," he said. "It's as well we're near home. He might feel he wanted to kill us." (Buff's expression was certainly anything but benign.)
Elizabeth shook hands with her friends, and said:
"It would be so nice if you would spend an evening with us. Not this week—perhaps Tuesday of next week?"
The Taylors accepted with effusion. There was nothing they enjoyed so much as spending an evening, and this Elizabeth knew.
"That'll be something to look forward to," Mr. Taylor said; and his wife added, "Ay, if we're here and able, but ye niver can tell."
As they walked on Elizabeth looked at her companion's face and laughed.
"Mr. Taylor is a queer little man," she said. "He used to worry me dreadfully. I simply couldn't stand his jokes—and then I found out that he wasn't the little fool I had been thinking him, and I was ashamed. He is rather a splendid person."