"About Nipper?" said Elizabeth softly. "I can't have it, you know."
"No, of course not!" said Hugh John.
Having known him, it was impossible that Elizabeth could decline upon Nipper Donnan. Hugh John did not, as you may well imagine, put it that way. The thing was simply unthinkable, that was all. He could no more let it happen than he would to his sister. He turned ever so little, and saw Elizabeth Fortinbras' face pale against the sunset.
Elizabeth looked at the boy, and her lips quivered a little. Hugh John became a shade more rigid.
"Let me speak to Nipper Donnan!" said Hugh John in a level tone.
"No," said the girl, "I do not wish to go back home again—to that!"
She meant to slatternly makeshift and lightly disguised lying.
"No need!" said a fierce voice immediately behind them, and Nipper Donnan leaped the stone wall from behind which he had been watching Elizabeth and Hugh John.
"Ah, Nipper!" said Hugh John lazily, handing up another sorrel stem to Elizabeth; "glad to see you, Nipper. Sit down and help to look for fat ones!"
"You are mocking me, both of you!" cried poor Nipper blackly. His face was hot and angry, his eyes injected like his father's when in wrath, and his hands were clinched tight.