"Mind, say 'As sure as daith,' an' ye'll cut your throat gin ye tell," said Cleg, very earnestly, "an' I'll tell ye, aye, an' make ye a member!"
Cleg was about to reveal state secrets, and he did not want to run any risks. Celie promised faithfully the utmost discretion.
"Weel, Miss Celie, I can see that ye are no gaun to do muckle guid amang us boys, if I dinna tell ye. An' I want ye no to believe ony lees, like what are telled to the ministers an' folk like them. There's mair ill in the Sooth Back than can be pitten richt wi' a track. I canna bide them tracks——"
The distribution of tracts was an old grievance of Cleg's. But Celie earnestly and instantly put him on the plain way again, for if he once began upon "tracks," there was no telling if ever she would get any nearer to her promised lesson on the good and evil of the boys' unions.
Celie found herself as eager as ever was her first mother Eve, to eat of the tree of the forbidden knowledge.
"Gie us your han', Miss Celie, I'll no hurt ye," said Cleg.
Celie drew off her dainty glove, and instantly extended a hand that was white and small beyond all the boy's imagining. Cleg took it reverently in his dirty, work-broadened paw. He touched the slender fingers as if they were made of thistle-down and might blow away accidentally. So he held his breath. Then he took out his knife, one with a point like a needle, which had been used in a shoe factory.
Perhaps Celie winced a little as he opened the blade, but, if it were so, it was very little indeed. Yet it was enough to be perceptible to her very sincere admirer.
Cleg let her hand drop, and without a pause thrust the sharp point into the ball of his own thumb, squeezing therefrom a single drop of blood.