"Oh, Harry; where did you get it?"
"Out of the paddock. I've been digging up turfs and getting this out,
and putting the turfs back, and stamping them down not to show, ever
since six o'clock. It _was_ hard work; and I was so afraid of John
coming. Mary, you won't tell tales?"
"No, Harry. But I don't think you ought to have taken it without
Mother's leave."
"I don't think you can call it stealing," said Harry. "Fields are a
kind of wild places anyhow, and the paddock belongs to Father, and it
certainly doesn't belong to John."
"No," said I, doubtfully.
"I won't get any more; it's dreadfully hard work," said Harry, but as
he shook the sack out and folded it up, he added (in rather a
satisfied tone), "I've got a good deal."
I helped him to wash himself for breakfast, and half-way through he
suddenly smiled and said, "John Parkinson will be glad when he sees
_you-know-what_, Mary, whatever the other John thinks of it."
But Harry did not cut any more turfs without leave, for he told me
that he had a horrid dream that night of waking up in prison with a
warder looking at him through a hole in the door of his cell, and
finding out that he was in penal servitude for stealing top-spit from
the bottom of the paddock, and Father would not take him out of
prison, and that Mother did not know about it.
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