CHAPTER XXIX
TOADY LION'S LITTLE WAYS.
THUS it was finally arranged. The castle was to be attacked by the combined forces of Windy Standard and the gipsy camp the following Saturday afternoon, which would give them the enemy in their fullest numbers. Notice would be sent, so that they could not say afterwards that they had been taken by surprise. General Napoleon Smith was to write the letter himself, but to say nothing in it about his new allies. That, as Cissy put it, "would be as good as a sixpenny surprise-packet to them."
So full was Hugh John of his new plan and the hope, now almost the certainty, of success, that when he went home he could not help confiding in Prissy—who, like a model housewife, was seated mending her doll's stockings, while Janet Sheepshanks attended to those of the elder members of the household.
She listened with quick-coming breath and rising colour, till Hugh John thought that his own military enthusiasm had kindled hers.
"Isn't it prime?—we'll beat them till they can't speak," said Hugh John triumphantly. "They'll never come back to our castle again after we finish with them."
But Priscilla was silent, and deep dejection gnawed dully at her heart.
"Poor things," she said thoughtfully; "perhaps they never had fathers to teach them, nor godfathers and godmothers to see that they learned their Catechism."