“Who was it?” A pause. “Tell me!”
“Mr. Shiner.”
After a silence that was only disturbed by the fall of an apple, a long-checked sigh from Dick, and a sob from Fancy, he said with real austerity—
“Tell it all;—every word!”
“He looked at me, and I looked at him, and he said, ‘Will you let me show you how to catch bullfinches down here by the stream?’ And I—wanted to know very much—I did so long to have a bullfinch! I couldn’t help that and I said, ‘Yes!’ and then he said, ‘Come here.’ And I went with him down to the lovely river, and then he said to me, ‘Look and see how I do it, and then you’ll know: I put this birdlime round this twig, and then I go here,’ he said, ‘and hide away under a bush; and presently clever Mister Bird comes and perches upon the twig, and flaps his wings, and you’ve got him before you can say Jack’—something; O, O, O, I forget what!”
“Jack Sprat,” mournfully suggested Dick through the cloud of his misery.
“No, not Jack Sprat,” she sobbed.
“Then ’twas Jack Robinson!” he said, with the emphasis of a man who had resolved to discover every iota of the truth, or die.
“Yes, that was it! And then I put my hand upon the rail of the bridge to get across, and—That’s all.”
“Well, that isn’t much, either,” said Dick critically, and more cheerfully. “Not that I see what business Shiner has to take upon himself to teach you anything. But it seems—it do seem there must have been more than that to set you up in such a dreadful taking?”