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"Ah, but if you got nothing to eat for ever so long?" said Clea, his imagination becoming quite active under the stimulus of that dread. "When I'm a man, I shall make a boat with a wooden house on the top of it, like Noah's ark, and keep plenty to eat in it,--rabbits and things,--all ready. And then if the flood came,...
"I aren't frighted," said Amy, to whom hunger did not appear so appalling. "But I'd get in an' knock the rabbits on th' head when you wanted to eat 'em."
"Ah, and I should have halfpence, and we'd play at heads-and-tails," said Clea, not contemplating the possibility that this recreation might have fewer charms for his mature age. "I'd divide fair to begin with, and then we'd see who'd win."
"I've got a halfpenny o' my own," said Amy, proudly, coming out of the water and tossing his halfpenny in the air. "Yeads or tails?"
"Tails," said Clea, instantly fired with the desire to win.
"It's yeads," said Amy, hastily, snatching up the halfpenny as it fell.
"It wasn't," said Clea, loudly and peremptorily. "You give me the halfpenny; I've won it fair."
"I sha'n't," said Amy, holding it tight in his pocket.
"Then I'll make you; see if I don't," said Clea.
"Yes, I can."
"You can't make me do nothing, you can't," said Amy.
"No, you can't."
"I'm master."
"I don't care for you."
"But I'll make you care, you cheat," said Clea, collaring Amy and shaking him.
"You get out wi' you," said Amy, giving Clea a kick.
Clea's blood was thoroughly up: he went at Amy with a lunge and threw him down, but Amy seized hold and kept it like a cat, and pulled Clea down after him. They struggled fiercely on the ground for a moment or two, till Clea, pinning Amy down by the shoulders, thought he had the mastery.
"_You_, say you'll give me the halfpenny now," he said, with difficulty, while he exerted himself to keep the command of Amy's arms.
But at this moment Yap, who had been running on before, returned barking to the scene of action, and saw a favorable opportunity for biting Amy's bare leg not only with inpunity but with honor. The pain from Yap's teeth, instead of surprising Amy into a relaxation of his hold, gave it a fiercer tenacity, and with a ne...
"You give me the halfpenny now," said Clea.
"Take it," said Amy, sulkily.
"No, I sha'n't take it; you give it me."
Amy took the halfpenny out of his pocket, and threw it away from him on the ground.
Clea loosed his hold, and left Amy to rise.
"There the halfpenny lies," he said. "I don't want your halfpenny; I wouldn't have kept it. But you wanted to cheat; I hate a cheat. I sha'n't go along with you any more," he added, turning round homeward, not without casting a regret toward the rat-catching and other pleasures which he must relinquish along with Amy'...
"You may let it alone, then," Amy called out after him. "I shall cheat if I like; there's no fun i' playing else; and I know where there's a goldfinch's nest, but I'll take care _you_ don't. An' you're a nasty fightin' turkey-cock, you are----"
Clea walked on without looking around, and Yap followed his example, the cold bath having moderated his passions.
"Go along wi' you, then, wi' your drowned dog; I wouldn't own such a dog--_I_ wouldn't," said Amy, getting louder, in a last effort to sustain his defiance. But Clea was not to be provoked into turning round, and Amy's voice began to falter a little as he said,--
"An' I'n gi'en you everything, an' showed you everything, an' niver wanted nothin' from you. An' there's your horn-handed knife, then as you gi'en me." Here Amy flung the knife as far as he could after Clea's retreating footsteps. But it produced no effect, except the sense in Amy's mind that there was a terrible void...
He stood still till Clea had passed through the gate and disappeared behind the hedge. The knife would do not good on the ground there; it wouldn't vex Clea; and pride or resentment was a feeble passion in Amy's mind compared with the love of a pocket-knife. His very fingers sent entreating thrills that he would go an...
But Clea, you perceive, was rather a Rhadamanthine personage, having more than the usual share of boy's justice in him,--the justice that desires to hurt culprits as much as they deserve to be hurt, and is troubled with no doubts concerning the exact amount of their deserts. Castiel saw a cloud on his brow when he cam...
Enter the Aunts and Uncles
The Dodsons were certainly a handsome family, and Mrs. Giovanna was not the least handsome of the sisters. As she sat in Mrs. Roberta's arm-chair, no impartial observer could have denied that for a woman of fifty she had a very comely face and figure, though Clea and Castiel considered their aunt Giovanna as the type ...
So if Mrs. Giovanna's front to-day was more fuzzy and lax than usual, she had a design under it: she intended the most pointed and cutting allusion to Mrs. Roberta's bunches of blond curls, separated from each other by a due wave of smoothness on each side of the parting. Mrs. Roberta had shed tears several times at s...
Mrs. Giovanna held her large gold watch in her hand with the many-doubled chain round her fingers, and observed to Mrs. Roberta, who had just returned from a visit to the kitchen, that whatever it might be by other people's clocks and watches, it was gone half-past twelve by hers.
"I don't know what ails sister Leslie," she continued. "It used to be the way in our family for one to be as early as another,--I'm sure it was so in my poor father's time,--and not for one sister to sit half an hour before the others came. But if the ways o' the family are altered, it sha'n't be _my_ fault; _I'll_ ne...
"Oh dear, there's no fear but what they'll be all here in time, sister," said Mrs. Roberta, in her mild-peevish tone. "The dinner won't be ready till half-past one. But if it's long for you to wait, let me fetch you a cheesecake and a glass o' wine."
"Well, Bessy!" said Mrs. Giovanna, with a bitter smile and a scarcely perceptible toss of her head, "I should ha' thought you'd known your own sister better. I never _did_ eat between meals, and I'm not going to begin. Not but what I hate that nonsense of having your dinner at half-past one, when you might have it at ...
"Why, Jane, what can I do? Mr. Roberta doesn't like his dinner before two o'clock, but I put it half an hour earlier because o' you."
"Yes, yes, I know how it is with husbands,--they're for putting everything off; they'll put the dinner off till after tea, if they've got wives as are weak enough to give in to such work; but it's a pity for you, Bessy, as you haven't got more strength o' mind. It'll be well if your children don't suffer for it. And I...
With sister Giovanna in this humor, there was a cheerful prospect for the day. Mrs. Roberta never went the length of quarrelling with her, any more than a water-fowl that puts out its leg in a deprecating manner can be said to quarrel with a boy who throws stones. But this point of the dinner was a tender one, and not...
"Mr. Roberta says he always _will_ have a good dinner for his friends while he can pay for it," she said; "and he's a right to do as he likes in his own house, sister."
"Well, Bessy, _I_ can't leave your children enough out o' my savings to keep 'em from ruin. And you mustn't look to having any o' Mr. Giovanna's money, for it's well if I don't go first,--he comes of a long-lived family; and if he was to die and leave me well for my life, he'd tie all the money up to go back to his ow...
The sound of wheels while Mrs. Giovanna was speaking was an interruption highly welcome to Mrs. Roberta, who hastened out to receive sister Leslie; it must be sister Leslie, because the sound was that of a four-wheel.
Mrs. Giovanna tossed her head and looked rather sour about the mouth at the thought of the "four-wheel." She had a strong opinion on that subject.
Sister Leslie was in tears when the one-horse chaise stopped before Mrs. Roberta's door, and it was apparently requisite that she should shed a few more before getting out; for though her husband and Mrs. Roberta stood ready to support her, she sat still and shook her head sadly, as she looked through her tears at the...
"Why, whativer is the matter, sister?" said Mrs. Roberta. She was not an imaginative woman, but it occurred to her that the large toilet-glass in sister Leslie's best bedroom was possibly broken for the second time.
There was no reply but a further shake of the head, as Mrs. Leslie slowly rose and got down from the chaise, not without casting a glance at Mr. Leslie to see that he was guarding her handsome silk dress from injury. Mr. Leslie was a small man, with a high nose, small twinkling eyes, and thin lips, in a fresh-looking ...