Page:In the Roar of the Sea.djvu/36

28 "What, Jamie, strike me, your only friend?"

Then lie threw his arms round her again, and kissed her. "I'll love you; only, Ju, say I am not to do rosa, rosœ!"

"How long have you been working at the first declension in the Latin grammar, Jamie?"

He tried for an instant to think, gave up the effort, laid his head on her shoulder, and said:

"I don't know and don't care. Say I am not to do rosa, rosœ!"

"What! not if papa wished it?"

"I hate the Latin grammar!"

For a while both remained silent. Judith felt the tension to which her mind and nerves had been subjected, and lapsed momentarily into a condition of something like unconsciousness, in which she was dimly sensible of a certain satisfaction rising out of the pause in thought and effort. The boy lay quiet, with his head on her shoulder, for a while, then withdrew his arms, folded his hands on his lap, and began to make a noise by compressing the air between the palms.

"There's a finch out there going 'chink! chink!' and listen, Ju, I can make 'chink! chink!' too."

Judith recovered herself from her distraction, and said:

"Never mind the finch now. Think of what I say. We shall have to leave this house."

"Why?"

"Of course we must, sooner or later, and the sooner the better. It is no more ours."

"Yes, it is ours. I have my rabbits here."

"Now that papa is dead it is no longer ours."

"It's a wicked shame."

"Not at all, Jamie. This house was given to papa for his life only; now it will go to a new rector, and Aunt Dunes is going to fetch us away to another house."

"When?"

"To-day."

"I won't go," said the boy. "I swear I won't."

"Hush, hush, Jamie! Don't use such expressions. I do not know where you have picked them up. We must go."

"And my rabbits, are they to go too?"