"So, you haven't got anything to say to us, my lad?" said Bonaparte,
momentarily forgetting his dignity, and bending forward with a little
snarl. "But what I mean is just this, my lad--when it takes a boy three-
quarters of an hour to fill a salt-pot, and when at three o'clock in the
morning he goes knocking about the doors of a loft, it's natural to suppose
there's mischief in it. It's certain there is mischief in it; and where
there's mischief in, it must be taken out," said Bonaparte, grinning into
the boy's face. Then, feeling that he had fallen from that high gravity
which was as spice to the pudding, and the flavour of the whole little
tragedy, he drew himself up. "Waldo," he said, "confess to me instantly,
and without reserve, that you ate the peaches."
The boy's face was white now. His eyes were on the ground, his hands
doggedly clasped before him.
"What, do you not intend to answer?"
The boy looked up at them once from under his bent eyebrows, and then
looked down again.
"The creature looks as if all the devils in hell were in it," cried Tant
Sannie. "Say you took them, boy. Young things will be young things; I was
older than you when I used to eat bultong in my mother's loft, and get the
little niggers whipped for it. Say you took them."
But the boy said nothing.
"I think a little solitary confinement might perhaps be beneficial," said
Bonaparte.
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