"You're a cool hand!"
"You don't suppose I care," said Jack, with lofty scorn.
Billy reflected. A boy who could stand unlimited "licking" without turning a hair was a creature to be approached with due respect, however ludicrous might be his preposterous innocence and his occasional fits of "softness".
"Do you really want to swop?"
" 'Course I do. Where's the bird?"
"At home. But — look here ------"
"Well?"
"Are you sure you won't..."
"Won't what?"
"Why, get me into hot water?"
Jack's big fist took him by the scruff of the neck and jerked him back on the heather.
"Now, then, none of your cheek!"
"No, I mean... if your uncle ——"
"Bill Greggs, if I swop, I swop. You take the knife, and I take the grey-bird and the hiding. Is that plain? Then stow your tot and clear out of there and fetch the bird."
"Oh, well, if you don't care, I don't." He ran back to the blacksmith's cottage. Jack lay still; kicking his hefels lazily, and ineditating on his bargain. He was not really quite so indifferent to consequences as he chose to appear. Now that there was no one to see, his forehead contracted again; at the bottom of his heart he was afraid. But his reputation as a "devil's limb" had to be kept up; and moreover, thrashings, as he reflected, are among the inevitable accidents of life, like "the act of God" that the railway companies mention in their consignment bills. You can't expect to get through boyhood without them; not, at least, if you happen to be an orphan of evil disposition, with a double dose of original sin and a pernicious resemblance to a mother who is both dead and damned; so it makes little difference just when they come. And then, to have one's eyes burnt out and be set to sing for all one's life in a little wooden cage... And after all, it would be a joke to see uncle downright furious. The theft of the Bishop's knife would probably go down in the "conduct book" with a black cross against it; uncle's memory was evidently short. Jack, for his part, needed no such artificial aids; he had many grievances against his uncle, and he remembered them every one.