"What did I tell you?" said Mr. Davenant Carter. "Try as I will, I cannot get the simplest thing out of my Sammy and Cissy if they don't choose to tell."
Nevertheless Mr. Smith, being a sanguine man and with little experience of children, tried again.
"There is no black boy in the neighbourhood," said Mr. Smith severely; "now tell the truth, children—at once, when I bid you!"
He uttered the last words in a loud and commanding tone.
"Us is telling the troof, father dear," said Toady Lion, in the "coaxy-woaxy" voice which he used when he wanted marmalade from Janet or a ride on the saddle from Mr. Picton Smith.
"Perhaps the boy had blackened his face to deceive the eye," suggested Mr. Mant, with the air of one familiar from infancy with the tricks and devices of the evil-minded of all ages.
"Was the ringleader's face blackened?—Answer at once!" said Mr. Smith sternly.
The General extracted his bruised and battered right hand from under the clothes and looked at it.
"I think so," he said, "leastways some has come off on my knuckles!"
Mr. Davenant Carter burst into a peal of jovial mirth.