The chief slightly waved a haughty hand, which instantly impelled Joe Craig forward as if moved by a spring. "Bring some fresh water from the well!" he commanded.
Joe Craig took the tin dipper, and was marching off. Prissy looked distressed.
"What is it?" said the robber chief. Now Prissy did not want to be rude, but she had her feelings.
"Oh, please, Mr. Captain," she said, "his hands—I think he has perhaps been working——"
Nipper Donnan had no fine scruples, but he respected them in such an unknown quantity as this dainty little lady with the green trimmed sun-bonnet and the widely-opened eyes.
"Tracy, fetch the water, you lazy jaundiced toad!" he commanded. The sallow student rose unwillingly, and moved off with his face still bent upon the thrilling pages of "The Wild Boys of New York," which he held folded small in his hand for convenience of perusal.
Presently the tea being made, the white cloth was laid on the grass, and the entire company of the Smoutchy Boys crowded about, always excepting the sentinels at the east and west doors, who being on duty could not immediately participate. The sheep's-head-pie, the bread, the butter, the fruits were all set out in order, and the whole presented such an appearance as the inside of the Castle of Windy Standard had never seen through all its generations.
Prissy conducted herself precisely as if she had been dispensing afternoon tea to callers in the drawing-room, as, since her last birthday, her father had occasionally permitted her to do.
"Do you take sugar?" she asked, delicately poising a piece in the dolls' sugar-tongs, and smiling her most politefully conventional smile at Nipper Donnan.
The brigand chief had never been asked such a question before, and had no answer of the usual kind at hand. But he replied for all that.