Part 24 (1/2)
”Hey, boys!” he cried, ”here's the Smith la.s.s. Let's go and hit her!”
Now Master Nosie had not been prominent on the great day of the battle of the Black Sheds, but he felt instinctively that against a solitary girl he had at last some chance to a.s.sert himself. So he threw away his paper cigar, and ran round the broken causeway to the place where Prissy was standing.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”'OH, PLEASE DON'T, SIR!'”]
”If you please, sir,” began Prissy sweetly, ”I've come to ask you not to fight any more. It isn't right, you know, and G.o.d will be angry.”
Nosie Cuthbertson did not at all attend to the appeal so gently and courteously made to him. He only caught Prissy by the hand, and began twisting her wrist and squeezing her slender fingers till the joints ground against each other, and Prissy bit her lips and was ready to cry with pain.
”Oh, _please_ don't, sir!” she pleaded softly, trying to smile as at a famous jest. ”I came because I wanted to speak to your captain, and I've brought a lot of nice things for you all. I think you will be sure to like them.”
”Humbug,” cried Nosie Cuthbertson, performing another yet more painful twist, ”the basket's ours anyway. I captured it. Hey, Bob, catch hold of this chuck, while I give the girl _toko_--I'll teach her to come spying here about our castle!”
CHAPTER x.x.xI.
PRISSY'S PICNIC.
But just at this moment an important personage stalked through the great broken-down doorway by which kings and princes most magnificent had once entered the ancient Castle of the Lorraines. He stood a moment or two on the threshold behind Nosie Cuthbertson, silently contemplating his courageous doings.
Presently a little stifled cry escaped from Prissy, caused by one of Nosie's refinements in torture, which consisted in separating her fingers and pulling two in one direction and two in the other. Nosie was a youth of parts and promise, who had already proceeded some distance on his way to the gallows.
But the Important Personage, who was no other than Nipper Donnan himself, did not long remain quiescent. He advanced suddenly, seized Nosie Cuthbertson by the scruff of the neck, kicked him several times severely, tweaked his ear till it looked as if it had been constructed of the best india-rubber, and then ended by tumbling him into the moat, where he disappeared as noiselessly as if he had fallen into green syrup.
”Now, what's all this?” cried the lordly Nipper, whose doings among his own no man dared to question, for reasons connected with health.
At the first sight of him Bob Hetherington had quietly shouldered his musket, and begun pacing up and down with his nose in the air, as if he had never so much as dreamed of going near Prissy's basket.
”What's all this, I say--you?” demanded his captain.
”I don't know any bloomin' thing about it----” began Bob, with whom ignorance, if not honesty, was certainly the best policy.
”Salute!” roared his officer; ”don't you know enough to salute when you speak to me? Want to get knocked endways?”
Sulkily Bob Hetherington obeyed.
”Well?” said Nipper Donnan, somewhat appeased by the appearance of Nosie Cuthbertson as he scrambled up the bank, with the green sc.u.m of duckweed clinging all over him. He was shaking his head and muttering anathemas, declaring what his father would do to Nipper Donnan, when within his heart he knew that first of all something very painful would be done to himself by that able-bodied relative as soon as ever he showed face at home.
”This girl she come to the drawbridge and hollered--that's all I know!” said the sentry, disa.s.sociating himself from any trouble as completely as possible. Bob felt that under the circ.u.mstances it was very distinctly folly to be wise. ”I don't know what she hollered, but Nosie he runs an' begins twisting her arm, and then the girl she begins to holler again!”
”I didn't mean to,” said Prissy tremulously, ”but he _was_ hurting so dreadfully.”
”Come here, you!” shouted Nipper to the retiring Nosie. Whereupon that young gentleman, hearing the dreadful voice of his chief officer, and being at the time on the right side of the moat, did not pause to respond, but promptly took to his heels in the direction of the town.
”Run after him and bring him back, two of you fellows! Don't dare come back without him!” cried Nipper, and at his word two big boys detached themselves from the doorposts in which the guard was kept, and dashed after the deserter.
”Oh, don't hurt him--perhaps he didn't mean it!” cried the universally sympathetic Prissy. ”He didn't hurt me much after all, and it is quite better now anyway.”
Nipper Donnan could, as we know, be as cruel as anybody, but he liked to keep both the theory and practice of terror in his own hands.
Besides, some possible far-off fragrance from another life stirred in him when he saw the slim girlish figure of Prissy Smith, clad all in white with a large sun-bonnet edged with pale green, standing on the bank and appealing to him with eyes different from any he had ever seen. He wanted, he knew not why, to kick Nosie Cuthbertson--kick him much harder than he had done before he saw whom he was tormenting. He had never particularly noticed any one's eyes before. He had thought vaguely that every one had the same kind of eyes.