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"Ah well, bad as he is, Mike's British same's I am, and he do hate a foreigner!" said Mrs. Barbara appreciatively. Time went on and Jinty began to shoot up; she was growing quite tall, and Ah Lon also grew apace. But, still, though the little foreigner could now find her way about in the language of her new country, she shut her heart against kind little Jinty's advances.
"If I'd but my will o' thee, thou thief, I'd flog thee sore!" she added. "Quoth the raven: never more!" solemnly edged in the professor, with a ponderous chuckle over his own aptitude which went unapplauded save by himself. "I want my breakfast, grandpapa," whimpered Jinty.
Then Mike craned suddenly forward to give the straight little legs a wicked nip, and Jinty fled with shrieks, to the proud ecstasy of the raven, who "hirpled" at her heels into the dining-room, into the learned presence of the old professor, by whom the mischievous Mike was welcomed as if he were a prince of the blood.
"And, really and truly, Mrs. Barbara, was it the very same Mike and not another raven that pecked at father's little legs same's he pecks at mine?" Jinty inquired sleepily. "The very self-same. Thief that he is and was!" wrathfully said Mrs.
It was soon after this talk that the two little girls sat in the study one morning. Ah Lon was at the table by the side of the professor, an open atlas between them and the old gentleman in his element. But Jinty sat apart, strangely quiet. Ah Lon, watching out of her slits of eyes, had never seen Jinty so dull and silent. And all that summer day it was the same.
"What's amiss with my dear maid?" anxiously asked Mrs. Barbara, when bed-time came. Then it all came out. "I've lost my pearl-rimmed locket!" sobbed Jinty. "Ah Lon asked to look at it this morning the first thing; she always does, you know. And I took it off, and then Mike pecked my legs and Ah Lon's so hard that we both ran away screaming, and I must have dropped the locket and it's gone!"
Barbara hopelessly regarded the strangely-wide little yellow face, the singular eyes narrow as slits, and the still more singular eyebrows. "Oh, never mind how she looks!" Jinty put her arms round the little yellow neck and lovingly kissed the stranger, who summarily shook her off. Perhaps Ah Lon was not accustomed to kisses at home.
"She won't have anything to say to me!" complained Jinty, "she won't make friends, Mrs. Barbara! The only thing she will look at is my pearl locket, she likes that!" Indeed Ah Lon seemed never tired of gazing at the pearl-rimmed locket which hung by a slender little chain round Jinty's neck, and contained the miniature of her pretty young mother so long dead.
Barbara's mind there was no doubt that Ah Lon had taken the coveted picture and concealed it in safe hiding. Jinty almost thought so too, and a gloom crept over Old Studley. "I dursn't tell the master, he's that wrapped up in the wicked little yellow-faced creature. I'll step over to the parson and tell he," Mrs.
Mike charged at Jinty with a volley of angry chatter and fierce flappings of his heavy black wings. It was no good trying to get in a word about the headless crocus plants or the seven stolen eggs. "Anybody would think that I was the thief who stole them, not you!" indignantly said Jinty.
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