“Lord! sup it up, my dear little gentleman,” she said to him. “You are welcome to it,—right welcome, you are; and your pa and your ma can pay for it.”
“No, no,” murmured Bertie, getting very red; and, fearing lest his longing for the meal should overcome his honor, he stumbled out of the baking-house door and ran up the tree-shadowed road faster than ever he had run in his life.
To be sure, he had plenty of money of his own; they all said so; but he never knew well where it was, or what it meant; and, besides, he intended never to go back to his grandmother and Deborah and Ralph and Royal any more, till he had found out the truth and seen his kingdom.
So he ran on through Bonchurch and out of it, leaving its pleasant green shade with a little sigh, half of impatience, half of hunger. He did not go on by the sea, for he knew by hearsay that this way would take him to Ventnor, and he was afraid people in a town would know him and stop him; so he set forth inland, where the deep lanes delve through the grassy downs, and here, sitting on a stile, the little Earl saw the ploughboy eating something white and round and big that he himself had never seen before.
“It must be something very delicious to make him enjoy it so much,” thought the little Earl, and then curiosity entered so into him, and he longed so much to taste this wonderful unknown thing, that he went up to the boy and said to him,—
“Will you be so kind as to let me know what you are eating?”
The ploughboy grinned from ear to ear.
“For certain, little zurr,” he said, with a burr and a drawl in his speech, and he gave the thing to Bertie, which was neither more nor less than a peeled turnip.
The little Earl looked at it doubtfully, for he did not much fancy what the other had handled with his big brown hands and bitten with his big yellow teeth. But then, to enjoy anything as much as that other had enjoyed it, and to taste something quite unknown!—this counterbalanced his disgust and over-ruled his delicacy. One side of the great white thing was unbitten; he took an eager tremulous little bite out of that.
“But, oh!” he cried in dismay as he tasted, “it has no taste at all, and what there is is nasty!”