ed, with a little contemptuous laugh.
"I don't want any spoilt little namby-pamby cry-babies along with me;
but that's no reason why I, a girl, should fetch milk for Robbie to
drink while he stays at home. Can't you see that, stupid-head?"

Duncan said "Yes," but he didn't, all the same. He and Elsie went
together, and it never had occurred to him that it ought to be
different. He didn't care for Robbie: Elsie didn't, and so he didn't.
Elsie said he was a spoilt baby, therefore Duncan knew he must be one;
and certainly he couldn't scamper over the moor, and climb the trees,
and fly here, there, and everywhere, like he and Elsie could.

Elsie had begun to move slowly along, carrying the basin, in which was
butter wrapped in wet cloths and a cool cabbage-leaf. Duncan had the
milk-can, and would have been almost home by now, had he not been
obliged to keep on waiting for Elsie to come up with him, his eager
footsteps continually carrying him far on ahead of her sauntering pace.

"I'm just not going over that hill," she said, deliberately, when at
length they reached the purple hillock on the other side of which stood
the cottage. "Come on, Duncan; I'm going round."

"But it's ever so much longer, and we're so late," grumbled Duncan.

"Who cares?" cried Elsie, stolidly. "I'm a girl and I'm not going to
climb up the hill in this heat."

Duncan stared again. He had never heard Elsie complain of the hill
before. Usually they scampered up it, and rolled down the steepest
side--not, truly, when there was milk to carry, but at other times. And
now Elsie was walking along in a languid, mincing fashion, as if she had
no more fun in her than Robbie himself, and had never scampered
bare-foot over the moor six days out of every week, no matter what the
weather might be.

"There's Robbie at the garden gate beckoning us. I expect mother's very
angry," cried Duncan, despairingly.

"Who cares? let him beckon," Elsie replied, with the most provoking
indifference. "Run on by yourself if you're afraid."

Most unkind taunt of all. Did not Elsie well know that Duncan was bound
to her by the chains of a most unswerving, unquestioning loyalty? and
that though he was, so to speak, ready to jump out of his skin with
impatient anxiety, to forsake Elsie would never enter his simple little
head.

When Robbie saw that they did not hurry, he came running towards them,
calling out, "Elsie, Duncan, do make haste! Mother's so cross. You are
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