"What can he want with us?"
"Perhaps your mother has sent him after her runaway boy; but whoever he is, I will tell him you are a fellow of the right spunk."
"Who can it be?"
"What matter who it is? Your mother won't whip you—will she?"
"No, of course not. My mother don't whip me."
"I thought she did, you seem so much afraid of her."
"I am not afraid of her."
"If you are, there is nothing else that can frighten you."
"I mind my mother because she is my mother; because I like to do so, and not because I am afraid of her. You had better not say much more about being afraid, Tom."
"Do you mean to say I was afraid?" said Thomas, smartly.