"You're afraid!"
"Possibly," said Hugh John, "but not in any way you would understand."
Then Elizabeth Fortinbras took up speech.
"Nipper Donnan," she said, "I won't pretend I don't know what you mean. You are driving me from the single happy place of refuge I have on earth. I cannot stay with your father and mother unless you stop pestering me. And then you talk about fighting. Why, Hugh John is nearly five years younger than you are——"
"He is as tall!" growled Nipper.
"Taller!" corrected Elizabeth coolly. "But if you behave like a whole menagerie of brutes, that won't make me care more about you. Hugh John is my brother; I have no other!"
"Umph!" snorted Nipper, "he doesn't come and sit out by Esk-waterside with his sisters."
I know that at that moment Hugh John's eye sought the deep purple stain of the Cave of Mystery, where he and I so often sat together. But he said nothing at all to his adversary. It might have been mistaken. It was to Elizabeth he spoke.
"I have something to say to Nipper which you had better not hear," he remarked quietly. "Here is a special handful of sorrel to take home with you. Let me see you as far as the first lamp-post on my cycle. Then I will come back and speak with Nipper."
They went, and Nipper sat on the empty log, gloomily cursing fate—but, educated by the experience of many years, never for a moment doubting that Hugh John would keep his word.