CHAPTER XXXI
PRISSY'S PICNIC.
BUT just at this moment an important personage stalked through the great broken-down doorway by which kings and princes most magnificent had once entered the ancient Castle of the Lorraines. He stood a moment or two on the threshold behind Nosie Cuthbertson, silently contemplating his courageous doings.
Presently a little stifled cry escaped from Prissy, caused by one of Nosie's refinements in torture, which consisted in separating her fingers and pulling two in one direction and two in the other. Nosie was a youth of parts and promise, who had already proceeded some distance on his way to the gallows.
But the Important Personage, who was no other than Nipper Donnan himself, did not long remain quiescent. He advanced suddenly, seized Nosie Cuthbertson by the scruff of the neck, kicked him several times severely, tweaked his ear till it looked as if it had been constructed of the best india-rubber, and then ended by tumbling him into the moat, where he disappeared as noiselessly as if he had fallen into green syrup.
"Now, what's all this?" cried the lordly Nipper, whose doings among his own no man dared to question, for reasons connected with health. At the first sight of him Bob Hetherington had quietly shouldered his musket, and begun pacing up and down with his nose in the air, as if he had never so much as dreamed of going near Prissy's basket.