"Oh, that ain't anything," sneered Sammy Carter, who was not in a good humour. His tone roused General Napoleon, who had the strong family feelings of all the Buonapartes.
"Shut up, Sammy, or I'll come and kick you. None of us did anything except Toady Lion. You ran away, and I got taken prisoner. Toady Lion is the only man among us!"
"I runned away too—at first," confessed the candid Toady Lion, who felt that he had so much real credit that he did not need to take a grain more than he deserved. "But I comed back quick—and I d'livered Donald out of prison, anyway—I did!"
Sammy Carter evidently had a sharp retort ready on the tip of his tongue, but he knew well the price he would have to pay for uttering it. Hugh John's eye was upon him, his right hand was closing on a bigger turnip—so Sammy forbore. But he kicked his feet more discontentedly than ever into the turf.
"Well," he said, changing the venue of the argument, "I don't think much of your old castle anyway. My father could have twice as good a castle if he liked——"
"Oh, 'course he could"—Hugh John's voice was distinctly ironical—"he might plant it on a peaty soil, and grow it from seed in two years; or perhaps he would like a cutting off ours!"
Mr. Davenant Carter was a distinguished agriculturist and florist.
"Don't you speak against my father!" cried Sammy Carter, glowering at General Napoleon in a way in which privates do not often look at their Commanders-in-Chief.
"Who's touching your father?" the latter said, a little more soothingly. "See here, Sammy, you've got your coat on wrong side out to-day. Go home and sleep on it. 'Tisn't my fault if you did run away, and got home before your sister—with a blue place on your back."
Sammy Carter flung out from under the shelter of the elm and went in search of Prissy, from whom in all his moods he was sure of comfort and understanding. He was a somewhat delicate boy, and generally speaking hated quarrelling as much as she did; but he had a clever tongue, which often brought him into trouble, and, like most other humorists, he did not at all relish a jest at his own expense.