"Stop that!" commands Jack Battle, springing of a sudden from the beach.

For an instant, Ben was taken aback.

Then the insolence that provokes its own punishment broke forth.

"Go play with your equals, jack-pudding! Jailbirds who ape their
betters are strangled up in Quebec," and he kicked down Rebecca's pile
too.

Rebecca's doll-blue eyes spilled over with tears, but Mistress Hortense
was the high-mettled, high-stepping little dame. She fairly stamped
her wrath, and to Jack's amaze took him by the hand and marched off
with the hauteur of an empress.

Then Ben must call out something about M. Picot, the French doctor, not
being what he ought, and little Hortense having no mother.

"Ben," said I quietly, "come out on the pier." The pier ran to deep
water. At the far end I spoke.

"Not another word against Hortense and Jack! Promise me!"

His back was to the water, mine to the shore. He would have promised
readily enough, I think, if the other monkeys had not followed--Rebecca
with big tear-drops on both cheeks, Hortense quivering with wrath, Jack
flushed, half shy and half shamed to be championed by a girl.

"Come, Ben; 'fore I count three, promise----"