Hansel grunted very inelegantly.  “Noises!” he retorted.  “That’s just like a girl.  The only noise that bothers me is the rumbling of my insides.  I’m hungry.”

Grettel closed her eyes as if this were really too much.  She seemed unable to think of a word to say.

Then Hansel said to Everychild:  “I don’t mind going with you.  Only, you’ll have to let Grettel go along too and you can’t go very far with a girl without something happening.”

“Of course, she’d go along,” said Everychild.  “As for something happening, it might be something nice more likely than not.”

At this Grettel clasped her hands in ecstacy.  “What a nice boy!” she exclaimed.

But Hansel only gave her a lofty look.  “I haven’t seen him do anything great,” he said.  “Now, if he could show us something to eat . . .”

“At least,” said Grettel, “he wants to keep on going, while you’re all for turning back.  I think he speaks very sensibly.”  And she came forward with a pretty blush on her cheeks and took a seat demurely by Everychild’s side.

She was really startled when Hansel, in his most offensive voice, exclaimed—­“Grettel!  Don’t you know you’re not allowed to sit on the ground in your best dress?”

But she managed to say, with a certain amount of independence, “Oh, Hansel—­as if anything mattered now!  Don’t you see that if we’re not going back we’ll have to make rules for ourselves from now on?  I’ve always wanted to do whatever I pleased in my best dress, and I’m not going to miss the chance now!”

Hansel looked knowingly at Everychild, and jerked his head toward Grettel.  “Females!” he said.  “That’s why you have to sit on them.  They’re like kites.  Once you let them go they’re over in the next field standing on their heads.”

But Everychild thought he should rather talk to Grettel.  He looked at her with a smile, and immediately she began to pluck at her skirt and pat her hair and look at him out of a corner of her eye.  He said:  “It was good of your parents, wasn’t it, to put your best clothes on you when they meant to lose you?”

She replied promptly:  “I should have thought it very mean of them if they hadn’t.”

Hansel seemed to agree with his sister for once; and he added to what she had said, “And you’ll notice they didn’t put any bread and cheese in the pockets, so far as anybody can find out.”

But Grettel threw her hands up and permitted her head to wilt over on one side.  “There!  We might just as well be going,” she said.  “Hansel never has a decent word to say.  When he’s hungry he growls; and when he’s eaten he nods.  For my part, it would be a relief to see him nod awhile.  Come, let’s be getting along!”

CHAPTER V

A DASHING YOUTH IN THE FOREST

And so they set forth along the road.  They had not gone far, however, when they espied a youth crossing the road before them.