"Then leave the house until you know how to behave," said the shepherd, seating himself quietly at the supper-table.
No need to tell Jack twice to go. Hungry as he was, having had nothing to eat since his early dinner, he turned at once on his heel, and muttering something about never entering it again, he went out and banged the door after him. The next moment Fairy was running after him, her lovely hair floating in the evening breeze as she hooked her arm in his and tried to keep up with his great hasty strides.
For ten minutes Jack stalked angrily along, so fast that Fairy had almost to run to keep up with him. He had turned sharp to the left on leaving the field in which the shepherd's house stood, and where he was going Fairy could not think, for the road they were in was only a kind of cart-drift leading to a stream which sprung out of the chalk hills, called the Winter-bourne, a mere tiny brook, which Fairy could leap dry-shod in summer; it was an angry rushing torrent in winter. It was a lovely July evening; the sun had set, but the after-glow still lingered in the western horizon; the pale blue sky was cloudless, and melted away into a delicate green and gold over the purple downs, which caught the golden reflection, and looked like golden hills in the evening light. About two miles to the left of Jack and Fairy lay the picturesque old town of Lewes in an amphitheatre of hills, the grand old castle and its ivy-covered walls forming the most attractive object in the picture; behind them, lay the soft rounded outlines of the range of downs, cold and grey under the darkening eastern sky. But Fairy was not much given to admiring sunsets or going into raptures over the Southdown scenery. She was hungry, and wanted to get back to supper as soon as she could persuade this tiresome angry Jack to come with her; and how to accomplish this was the problem she was anxiously trying to solve as she panted along by Jack's side. Her task would be only half done when she had succeeded in this, but this was the worst half. If she could only bring Jack to reason, she would soon persuade the shepherd to capitulate; he had never refused her anything in her life; many a time had she saved the boys from punishment; she was quite certain he would listen to her now. But Jack! She was by no means so sure of him; he required very delicate manipulation.
At last she stopped just as they reached the Winter-bourne, a harmless, innocent-looking little brook, whose violence in winter would have seemed incredible to Jack and Fairy if they had not once had a terrible experience of it.
It was when Fairy and Charlie were eight years old. Charlie having seen the brook the day before, swollen and rushing wildly along, challenged Fairy to wade through it; she, unconscious of the change, and remembering it only as a tiny stream which barely covered her little feet, accepted the challenge, declaring it was the easiest thing in the world to do; and the more Charlie protested she would never be able to succeed, the more determined Fairy was to try. But when they reached the bourne and Fairy saw, instead of a tiny brook, an angry stream thirty feet wide, rushing along, and disappearing under the turf, to rise again further on, and, as Charlie told her, run through the priory grounds, where it was deep enough to drown a cow, her heart sank within her.
"I told you so," said Charlie; "I said you could not do it, but you would not believe me."
"But I will do it. Look here, Charlie, it is not deep here, is it? It can't be, you know, we have often played at mud pies where it is now running; it won't come much above my knees," said Fairy, taking off her shoes and socks.
"You had better not go, Fairy. It mayn't be deep, but it is very rapid; you may be carried away with it," urged Charlie.
"Bah!" laughed Fairy, dipping her pretty feet into the cold water, and shrieking with delight.
"Well, wait a minute till I have taken off my shoes, and we'll go together. It will be up to our waists in the middle, I believe," said Charlie; and the next minute the two children were wading across the angry bourne, laughing and screaming with delight, as each step they took the stream ran stronger and deeper.