“Stop,” he cried; “you can’t drink there.”
“Why not?”
“Why of course it’s the New Sea. We must go round to the Nile; it’s fresh water there.”
So they ran through the firs to the Nile, and lapped from the brook. On the way home a little boy stepped out from the trees on the bank where it was high, and he could look down at them.
“I say!”—he had been waiting for them—“say!”
“Well!” growled Mark.
“Bevis,” said the boy. Bevis looked up, he could not demean himself to answer such a mite. The boy looked round to see that he was sure of his retreat through the trees to the gap in the hedge he could crawl through, but they would find it difficult. Besides, they would have to run up the bank, which was thick with brambles. He got his courage together and shouted in his shrill little voice,—
“I say, Ted says he shan’t play if you don’t have war soon.”
Mark picked up a dead branch and hurled it at the mite; the mite dodged it, and it broke against a tree, then he ran for his life, but they did not follow. Bevis said nothing till they reached the blue summer-house at home and sat down. Then he yawned.
“War is a bother,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets, and leaning back in an attitude of weary despair at having to do something. If the rest would not have played, he would have egged them on with furious energy till they did. As they were eager he did not care.