Mr. Simlins grunted. "School ain't all 'nuts to him,'" he said with a grim smile. "Well which of you was it?—'twas a fellow about as big as you here, you sir!"—addressing in a more assured tone another boy who was swaggering near,—"you! what have you been doing to Miss Faith? It was you."
"'Twan't me, nother!" said the boy surlily; "nor I hain't done nothin'! but minded my own business."
In a tone which implied that Mr. Simlins was not acting on the same laudable principle.
"What has been done?" said Mr. Linden. And certainly his tone implied that he was minding his own business.
"Well," said Mr. Simlins, "I don't know as they've done much of anything; but I guessed they'd been givin' her some sass or vexin' her somehow; and as she's a kind o' favour_ite_ o' mine it riled me. I was too fur to hear what 'twas."
"Where was she?
"She was round yonder—not fur—There had been some sort of a scrimmage, I guess, between two of 'em, a little one and this fellow; and she parted 'em. She had hold o' this one when I see 'em first—you couldn't have done it better," said Mr. Simlins with a sly cast of his eye;—"you can set her to be your 'vice' when you want one. I was comin' up from the river, you see, and came up behind 'em, and I couldn't hear what they said; but when she let him go, I see her give a kind o' sheer look round this way, and then she put up her hand to her cheek and cleared for home like—a gazetteer!"—said Mr. Simlins, who had given this information in an undertone. "Made straight tracks for the house, I tell ye!"
"A little one and which one?" was the next inquiry.
Mr. Simlins went peering about among the crowd and finally laid hold on the identical shoulder of little Johnny Fax.
"Ain't it you?" said Mr. Simlins. "Ain't that red basket yourn?"