“ ’Cos I broke the bloody thing!” wailed the boy desperately. “I were crossing one of they darned fields and I treadit in a girt rabbit-gin and came near to breaking me neck, let alone thik bloody egg.”

“Lob, I’m right-down ashamed of you!” cried Gerda, in a voice quivering with moral indignation.

“What be up to now, then?” responded the boy. “What be all this hullabaloo about, when a person tells straight out what a person gone and done? If it be so turble hard to ’ee to lose threepence, why did ’ee go rat-hunting with him here and leave anyone all lonesome-like? For all you care, a chap might have been tossed, this here dark night, by some o’ they girt bullicks!”

His voice grew plaintive; but Gerda was unmoved.

“You never found any nest at all, Lob, and you know you didn’t.”