Now Master Nosie had not been prominent on the great day of the battle of the Black Sheds, but he felt instinctively that against a solitary girl he had at last some chance to assert himself. So he threw away his paper cigar, and ran round the broken causeway to the place where Prissy was standing.
"'OH, PLEASE DON'T, SIR!'"
"If you please, sir," began Prissy sweetly, "I've come to ask you not to fight any more. It isn't right, you know, and God will be angry."
Nosie Cuthbertson did not at all attend to the appeal so gently and courteously made to him. He only caught Prissy by the hand, and began twisting her wrist and squeezing her slender fingers till the joints ground against each other, and Prissy bit her lips and was ready to cry with pain.
"Oh, please don't, sir!" she pleaded softly, trying to smile as at a famous jest. "I came because I wanted to speak to your captain, and I've brought a lot of nice things for you all. I think you will be sure to like them."
"Humbug," cried Nosie Cuthbertson, performing another yet more painful twist, "the basket's ours anyway. I captured it. Hey, Bob, catch hold of this chuck, while I give the girl toko—I'll teach her to come spying here about our castle!"
