“Yeu’m afraid,” said McTurk, at the psychological moment.
“Aie!” Beetle echoed, knowing her weak point. “There’s not a maid to
Northam ’ud think twice. An’ yeou such a fine maid, tu!”
McTurk planted one foot firmly against the inner door lest Mother Yeo
should return inopportunely, for Mary’s face was set. It was then that
Tulke found his way blocked by a tall daughter of Devon--that county of
easy kisses, the pleasantest under the sun. He dodged aside politely.
She reflected a moment, and laid a vast hand upon his shoulder.
“Where be ’ee gwaine tu, my dearr?” said she.
Over the handkerchief he had crammed into his mouth Stalky could see the
boy turn scarlet.
“Gie I a kiss! Don’t they larn ’ee manners to College?”
Tulke gasped and wheeled. Solemnly and conscientiously Mary kissed him
twice, and the luckless prefect fled.
She stepped into the shop, her eyes full of simple wonder. “Kissed ’un?”
said Stalky, handing over the money.
“Iss, fai! But, oh, my little body, he’m no Colleger. ’Zeemed tu-minded
to cry, like.”
“Well, we won’t. Yell couldn’t make us cry that way,” said McTurk.
“Try.”
Whereupon Mary cuffed them all round.
As they went out with tingling ears, said Stalky generally, “Don’t think
there’ll be much of a prefects’ meeting.”
“Won’t there, just!” said Beetle. “Look here. If he kissed her--which
is our tack--he is a cynically immoral hog, and his conduct is blatant
indecency. _Confer orationes Regis furiosissimi_, when he collared me
readin’ ‘Don Juan.’”
“’Course he kissed her,” said McTurk. “In the middle of the street. With
his house-cap on!”
“Time, 3.57 p.m. Make a note o’ that. What d’you mean, Beetle?” said
Stalky.
“Well! He’s a truthful little beast. He may say he was kissed.”
“And then?”
“Why, then!” Beetle capered at the mere thought of it. “Don’t you see?
The corollary to the giddy proposition is that the Sixth can’t protect
’emselves from outrages an’ ravishin’s. Want nursemaids to look after
’em! We’ve only got to whisper that to the Coll. Jam for the Sixth! Jam
for us! Either way it’s jammy!”
“By Gum!” said Stalky. “Our last term’s endin’ well. Now you cut along
an’ finish up your old rag, and Turkey and me will help. We’ll go in the
back way. No need to bother Randall.”
“Don’t play the giddy garden-goat, then?” Beetle knew what help meant,
though he was by no means averse to showing his importance before his
allies. The little loft behind Randall’s printing office was his own
territory, where he saw himself already controlling the “Times.” Here,
under the guidance of the inky apprentice, he had learned to find his
way more or less circuitously about the case, and considered himself an
expert compositor.
The school paper in its locked formes lay on a stone-topped table, a
proof by the side; but not for worlds would Beetle have corrected from
the mere proof. With a mallet and a pair of tweezers, he knocked out
mysterious wedges of wood that released the forme, picked a letter here
and inserted a letter there, reading as he went along and stopping much
to chuckle over his own contributions.
“You won’t show off like that,” said McTurk, “when you’ve got to do it
for your living. Upside down and backwards, isn’t it? Let’s see if I can
read it.”
“Get out!” said Beetle. “Go and read those formes in the rack there, if
you think you know so much.”
“Formes in a rack! What’s that? Don’t be so beastly professional.”
McTurk drew off with Stalky to prowl about the office. They left little
unturned.
“Come here a shake, Beetle. What’s this thing?” said Stalky, in a few
minutes. “Looks familiar.”
Said Beetle, after a glance: “It’s King’s Latin prose exam. paper.
_In--In Verrem: actio prima_. What a lark!”
“Think o’ the pure-souled, high-minded boys who’d give their eyes for a
squint at it!” said McTurk.
“No, Willie dear,” said Stalky; “that would be wrong and painful to our
kind teachers. You wouldn’t crib, Willie, would you?”
“Can’t read the beastly stuff, anyhow,” was the reply. “Besides, we’re
leavin’ at the end o’ the term, so it makes no difference to us.”
“’Member what the Considerate Bloomer did to Spraggon’s account of the
Puffin’ton Hounds? We must sugar Mr. King’s milk for him,” said Stalky,
all lighted from within by a devilish joy. “Let’s see what Beetle can do
with those forceps he’s so proud of.”
“Don’t see now you can make Latin prose much more cock-eye than it is,
but we’ll try,” said Beetle, transposing an _aliud_ and _Asiae_ from two
sentences. “Let’s see! We’ll put that full-stop a little further on,
and begin the sentence with the next capital. Hurrah! Here’s three lines
that can move up all in a lump.”
“‘One of those scientific rests for which this eminent huntsman is so
justly celebrated.’” Stalky knew the Puffington run by heart.
“Hold on! Here’s a _vol_--_voluntate quidnam_ all by itself,” said
McTurk.
“I’ll attend to her in a shake. _Quidnam_ goes after _Dolabella_.”
“Good old Dolabella,” murmured Stalky. “Don’t break him. Vile prose
Cicero wrote, didn’t he? He ought to be grateful for--”
“Hullo!” said McTurk, over another forme. “What price a giddy ode?
_Qui_--_quis_--oh, it’s _Quis multa gracilis_, o’ course.”
“Bring it along. We’ve sugared the milk here,” said Stalky, after a few
minutes’ zealous toil. “Never thrash your hounds unnecessarily.”
“_Quis munditiis_? I swear that’s not bad,” began Beetle, plying the
tweezers. “Don’t that interrogation look pretty? _Heu quoties fidem_!
That sounds as if the chap were anxious an’ excited. _Cui flavam religas
in rosa_--Whose flavor is relegated to a rose. _Mutatosque Deos flebit
in antro_.”
“Mute gods weepin’ in a cave,” suggested Stalky. “’Pon my Sam, Horace
needs as much lookin’ after as--Tulke.”
They edited him faithfully till it was too dark to see.
* * * * *
“‘Aha! _Elucescebat_, quoth our friend.’ Ulpian serves my need, does it?
If King can make anything out of _that_, I’m a blue-eyed squatteroo,”
said Beetle, as they slid out of the loft window into a back alley of
old acquaintance and started on a three-mile trot to the College. But
the revision of the classics had detained them too long. They halted,
blown and breathless, in the furze at the back of the gasometer, the
College lights twinkling below, ten minutes at least late for tea and
lock-up.
“It’s no good,” puffed McTurk. “Bet a bob Foxy is waiting for defaulters
under the lamp by the Fives Court. It’s a nuisance, too, because the
Head gave us long leave, and one doesn’t like to break it.”
“‘Let me now from the bonded ware’ouse of my knowledge,’” began Stalky.
“Oh, rot! Don’t Jorrock. Can we make a run for it?” snapped McTurk.
“‘Bishops’ boots Mr. Radcliffe also condemned, an’ spoke ’ighly in favor
of tops cleaned with champagne an’ abricot jam.’ Where’s that thing
Cokey was twiddlin’ this afternoon?”
They heard him groping in the wet, and presently beheld a great miracle.
The lights of the Coastguard cottages near the sea went out; the
brilliantly illuminated windows of the Golf-club disappeared, and were
followed by the frontages of the two hotels. Scattered villas dulled,
twinkled, and vanished. Last of all, the College lights died also. They
were left in the pitchy darkness of a windy winter’s night.
“‘Blister my kidneys. It _is_ a frost. The dahlias are dead!’” said
Stalky. “Bunk!”
They squattered through the dripping gorse as the College hummed like
an angry hive and the dining-rooms chorused, “Gas! gas! gas!” till they
came to the edge of the sunk path that divided them from their study.
Dropping that ha-ha like bullets, and rebounding like boys, they dashed
to their study, in less than two minutes had changed into dry trousers
and coat, and, ostentatiously slippered, joined the mob in the
dining-hall, which resembled the storm-centre of a South American
revolution.
“‘Hellish dark and smells of cheese.’” Stalky elbowed his way into
the press, howling lustily for gas. “Cokey must have gone for a walk.
Foxy’ll have to find him.”
Prout, as the nearest house-master, was trying to restore order, for
rude boys were flicking butter-pats across chaos, and McTurk had
turned on the fags’ tea-urn, so that many were parboiled and wept with
an unfeigned dolor. The Fourth and Upper Third broke into the school
song, the “_Vive la Compagnie_,” to the accompaniment of drumming
knife-handles; and the junior forms shrilled bat-like shrieks and
raided one another’s victuals. Two hundred and fifty boys in high
condition, seeking for more light, are truly earnest inquirers.
When a most vile smell of gas told them that supplies had been renewed,
Stalky, waistcoat unbuttoned, sat gorgedly over what might have been
his fourth cup of tea. “And that’s all right,” he said. “Hullo! ’Ere’s
Pomponius Ego!”
It was Carson, the head of the school, a simple, straight-minded soul,
and a pillar of the First Fifteen, who crossed over from the prefects’
table and in a husky, official voice invited the three to attend in his
study in half an hour. “Prefects’ meetin’! Prefects’ meetin’!” hissed
the tables, and they imitated barbarically the actions and effects of
the ground-ash.
“How are we goin’ to jest with ’em?” said Stalky, turning half-face to
Beetle. “It’s your play this time!”
“Look here,” was the answer, “all I want you to do is not to laugh. I’m
goin’ to take charge o’ young Tulke’s immorality--_à la_ King, and it’s
goin’ to be serious. If you can’t help laughin’ don’t look at me, or
I’ll go pop.”
“I see. All right,” said Stalky.
McTurk’s lank frame stiffened in every muscle and his eyelids dropped
half over his eyes. That last was a war-signal.
The eight or nine seniors, their faces very set and sober, were ranged
in chairs round Carson’s severely Philistine study. Tulke was not
popular among them, and a few who had had experience of Stalky and
Company doubted that he might, perhaps, have made an ass of himself. But
the dignity of the Sixth was to be upheld. So Carson began hurriedly:
“Look here, you chaps, I’ve--we’ve sent for you to tell you you’re a
good deal too cheeky to the Sixth--have been for some time--and--and
we’ve stood about as much as we’re goin’ to, and it seems you’ve been
cursin’ and swearin’ at Tulke on the Bideford road this afternoon, and
we’re goin’ to show you you can’t do it. That’s all.”
“Well, that’s awfully good of you,” said Stalky, “but we happen to have
a few rights of our own, too. You can’t, just because you happen to
be made prefects, haul up seniors and jaw ’em on spec., like a
house-master. _We_ aren’t fags, Carson. This kind of thing may do for
Davies Tertius, but it won’t do for us.”
“It’s only old Prout’s lunacy that we weren’t prefects long ago. You
know that,” said McTurk. “You haven’t any tact.”
“Hold on,” said Beetle. “A prefects’ meetin’ has to be reported to the
Head. I want to know if the Head backs Tulke in this business?”
“Well--well, it isn’t exactly a prefects’ meeting,” said Carson. “We
only called you in to warn you.”
“But all the prefects are here,” Beetle insisted. “Where’s the
difference?”
“My Gum!” said Stalky. “Do you mean to say you’ve just called us in for
a jaw--after comin’ to us before the whole school at tea an’ givin’ ’em
the impression it was a prefects’ meeting? ’Pon my Sam, Carson, you’ll
get into trouble, you will.”
“Hole-an’-corner business--hole-an’-corner business,” said McTurk,
wagging his head. “Beastly suspicious.”
The Sixth looked at each other uneasily. Tulke had called three
prefects’ meetings in two terms, till the Head had informed the Sixth
that they were expected to maintain discipline without the recurrent
menace of his authority. Now, it seemed that they had made a blunder at
the outset, but any right-minded boy would have sunk the legality and
been properly impressed by the Court. Beetle’s protest was distinct
“cheek.”
“Well, you chaps deserve a lickin’,” cried one Naughten incautiously.
Then was Beetle filled with a noble inspiration.
“For interferin’ with Tulke’s amours, eh?” Tulke turned a rich sloe
color. “Oh, no, you don’t!” Beetle went on. “You’ve had your innings.
We’ve been sent up for cursing and swearing at you, and we’re goin’ to
be let off with a warning! _Are_ we? Now then, you’re going to catch
it.”
“I--I--I--” Tulke began. “Don’t let that young devil start jawing.”
“If you’ve anything to say you must say it decently,’’ said Carson.
“Decently? I will. Now look here. When we went into Bideford we met
this ornament of the Sixth--is that decent enough?--hanging about on
the road with a nasty look in his eye. We didn’t know _then_ why he was
so anxious to stop us, _but_ at five minutes to four, when we were in
Yeo’s shop, we saw Tulke in broad daylight, _with_ his house-cap on,
kissin’ an’ huggin’ a woman on the pavement. Is that decent enough for
you?”
“I didn’t--I wasn’t.”
“We saw you!” said Beetle. “And now--I’ll be decent, Carson--you sneak
back with her kisses” (not for nothing had Beetle perused the later
poets) “hot on your lips and call prefects’ meetings, which aren’t
prefects’ meetings, to uphold the honor of the Sixth.” A new and
heaven-cleft path opened before him that instant. “And how do we know,”
he shouted--“how do we know how many of the Sixth are mixed up in this
abominable affair?”
“Yes, that’s what we want to know,” said McTurk, with simple dignity.
“We meant to come to you about it quietly, Carson, but you _would_ have
the meeting,” said Stalky sympathetically.
The Sixth were too taken aback to reply. So, carefully modelling
his rhetoric on King, Beetle followed up the attack, surpassing and
surprising himself, “It--it isn’t so much the cynical immorality of the
biznai, as the blatant indecency of it, that’s so awful. As far as we
can see, it’s impossible for us to go into Bideford without runnin’ up
against some prefect’s unwholesome amours. There’s nothing to snigger
over, Naughten. _I_ don’t pretend to know much about these things--but
it seems to me a chap must be pretty far dead in sin” (that was a
quotation from the school chaplain) “when he takes to embracing his
paramours” (that was Hakluyt) “before all the city” (a reminiscence of
Milton). “He might at least have the decency--you’re authorities on
decency, I believe--to wait till dark. But he didn’t. You didn’t! Oh,
Tulke. You--you incontinent little animal!”
“Here, shut up a minute. What’s all this about, Tulke?” said Carson.
“I--look here. I’m awfully sorry. I never thought Beetle would take this
line.”
“Because--you’ve--no decency--you--thought--I hadn’t,” cried Beetle all
in one breath.
“Tried to cover it all up with a conspiracy, did you?” said Stalky.
“Direct insult to all three of us,” said McTurk. “A most filthy mind you
have, Tulke.”
“I’ll shove you fellows outside the door if you go on like this,” said
Carson angrily.
“That proves it’s a conspiracy,” said Stalky, with the air of a virgin
martyr.
“I--I was goin’ along the street--I swear I was,” cried Tulke, “and--and
I’m awfully sorry about it--a woman came up and kissed me. I swear I
didn’t kiss her.”
There was a pause, filled by Stalky’s long, liquid whistle of contempt,
amazement, and derision.
“On my honor,” gulped the persecuted one. “Oh, do stop him jawing.”
“Very good,” McTurk interjected. “We are compelled, of course, to accept
your statement.”
“Confound it!” roared Naughten. “You aren’t head-prefect here, McTurk.”
“Oh, well,” returned the Irishman, “you know Tulke better than we do. I
am only speaking for ourselves. _We_ accept Tulke’s word. But all I can
say is that if I’d been collared in a similarly disgustin’ situation,
and had offered the same explanation Tulke has, I--I wonder what you’d
have said. However, it seems on Tulke’s word of honor--”
“And Tulkus--beg pardon--_kiss_, of course---Tulkiss is an honorable
man,” put in Stalky.
“--that the Sixth can’t protect ’emselves from bein’ kissed when they
go for a walk!” cried Beetle, taking up the running with a rush. “Sweet
business, isn’t it? Cheerful thing to tell the fags, ain’t it? We aren’t
prefects, of course, but we aren’t kissed very much. Don’t think that
sort of thing ever enters our heads; does it, Stalky?”
“Oh, no!” said Stalky, turning aside to hide his emotions. McTurk’s face
merely expressed lofty contempt and a little weariness.
“Well, you seem to know a lot about it,” interposed a prefect.
“Can’t help it--when you chaps shove it under our noses.” Beetle dropped
into a drawling parody of King’s most biting colloquial style--the
gentle rain after the thunder-storm. “Well, it’s all very sufficiently
vile and disgraceful, isn’t it? I don’t know who comes out of it
worst: Tulke, who happens to have been caught; or the other fellows who
haven’t. And we--” here he wheeled fiercely on the other two--“we’ve
got to stand up and be jawed by them because we’ve disturbed their
intrigues.”
“Hang it! I only wanted to give you a word of warning,” said Carson,
thereby handing himself bound to the enemy.
“Warn? You?” This with the air of one who finds loathsome gifts in his
locker. “Carson, _would_ you be good enough to tell us what conceivable
thing there is that you are entitled to warn us about after this
exposure? Warn? Oh, it’s a little too much! Let’s go somewhere where
it’s clean.”
The door banged behind their outraged innocence.
“Oh, Beetle! Beetle! Beetle! Golden Beetle!” sobbed Stalky, hurling
himself on Beetle’s panting bosom as soon as they reached the study.
“However did you do it?”
“Dear-r man” said McTurk, embracing Beetle’s head with both arms, while
he swayed it to and fro on the neck, in time to this ancient burden--
“Pretty lips--sweeter than--cherry or plum.
Always look--jolly and--never look glum;
Seem to say--Come away. Kissy!--come, come!
Yummy-yum! Yummy-yum! Yummy-yum-yum!”
“Look out. You’ll smash my gig-lamps,” puffed Beetle, emerging. “Wasn’t
it glorious? Didn’t I ‘Eric’ ’em splendidly? Did you spot my cribs
from King? Oh, blow!” His countenance clouded. “There’s one adjective
I didn’t use--obscene. Don’t know how I forgot that. It’s one of King’s
pet ones, too.”
“Never mind. They’ll be sendin’ ambassadors round in half a shake to
beg us not to tell the school. It’s a deuced serious business for them,”
said McTurk. “Poor Sixth--poor old Sixth!”
“Immoral young rips,” Stalky snorted. “What an example to pure-souled
boys like you and me!”
And the Sixth in Carson’s study sat aghast, glowering at Tulke, who was
on the edge of tears. “Well,” said the head-prefect acidly. “You’ve made
a pretty average ghastly mess of it, Tulke.”
“Why--why didn’t you lick that young devil Beetle before he began
jawing?” Tulke wailed.
“I knew there’d be a row,” said a prefect of Prout’s house. “But you
would insist on the meeting, Tulke.”
“Yes, and a fat lot of good it’s done us,” said Naughten. “They come in
here and jaw our heads off when we ought to be jawin’ them. Beetle talks
to us as if we were a lot of blackguards and--and all that. And
when they’ve hung us up to dry, they go out and slam the door like a
house-master. All your fault, Tulke.”
“But I didn’t kiss her.”
“You ass! If you’d said you _had_ and stuck to it, it would have been
ten times better than what you did,” Naughten retorted. “Now they’ll
tell the whole school--and Beetle’ll make up a lot of beastly rhymes and
nick-names.”
“But, hang it, she kissed me!” Outside of his work, Tulke’s mind moved
slowly.
“I’m not thinking of you. I’m thinking of us. I’ll go up to their study
and see if I can make ’em keep quiet!”
“Tulke’s awf’ly cut up about this business,” Naughten began,
ingratiatingly, when he found Beetle.
“Who’s kissed him this time?”
“--and I’ve come to ask you chaps, and especially you, Beetle, not to
let the thing be known all over the school. Of course, fellows as senior
as you are can easily see why.”
“Um!” said Beetle, with the cold reluctance of one who foresees an
unpleasant public duty. “I suppose I must go and talk to the Sixth
again.”
“Not the least need, my dear chap, I assure you,” said Naughten hastily.
“I’ll take any message you care to send.”
But the chance of supplying the missing adjective was too tempting. So
Naughten returned to that still undissolved meeting, Beetle, white, icy,
and aloof, at his heels.
“There seems,” he began, with laboriously crisp articulation, “there
seems to be a certain amount of uneasiness among you as to the steps
we may think fit to take in regard to this last revelation of
the--ah--obscene. If it is any consolation to you to know that we have
decided--for the honor of the school, you understand--to keep our mouths
shut as to these--ah--obscenities, you--ah--have it.”
He wheeled, his head among the stars, and strode statelily back to his
study, where Stalky and McTurk lay side by side upon the table wiping
their tearful eyes--too weak to move.
* * * * *
The Latin prose paper was a success beyond their wildest dreams.
Stalky and McTurk were, of course, out of all examinations (they did
extra-tuition with the Head), but Beetle attended with zeal.
“This, I presume, is a par-ergon on your part,” said King, as he dealt
out the papers. “One final exhibition ere you are translated to loftier
spheres? A last attack on the classics? It seems to confound you
already.”
Beetle studied the print with knit brows. “_I_ can’t make head or tail
of it,” he murmured. “What does it mean?”
“No, no!” said King, with scholastic coquetry. “We depend upon _you_
to give us the meaning. This is an examination, Beetle mine, not a
guessing-competition. You will find your associates have no difficulty
in--”
Tulke left his place and laid the paper on the desk. King looked, read,
and turned a ghastly green.
“Stalky’s missing a heap,” thought Beetle. “Wonder how King’ll get out
of it!”
“There seems,” King began with a gulp, “a certain modicum of truth
in our Beetle’s remark. I am--er--inclined to believe that the worthy
Randall must have dropped this in ferule--if you know what that means.
Beetle, you purport to be an editor. Perhaps you can enlighten the form
as to formes.”
“What, sir! Whose form! I don’t see that there’s any verb in this
sentence at all, an’--an’--the Ode is all different, somehow.”
“I was about to say, before you volunteered your criticism, that an
accident must have befallen the paper in type, and that the printer
reset it by the light of nature. No--” he held the thing at arm’s
length--“our Randall is not an authority on Cicero or Horace.”
“Rather mean to shove it off on Randall,” whispered Beetle to his
neighbor. “King must ha’ been as screwed as an owl when he wrote it
out.”
“But we can amend the error by dictating it.”
“No, sir.” The answer came pat from a dozen throats at once. “That cuts
the time for the exam. Only two hours allowed, sir. ’Tisn’t fair. It’s
a printed-paper exam. How’re we goin’ to be marked for it! It’s all
Randall’s fault. It isn’t _our_ fault, anyhow. An exam.’s an exam.,”
etc., etc.
Naturally Mr. King considered this was an attempt to undermine his
authority, and, instead of beginning dictation at once, delivered a
lecture on the spirit in which examinations should be approached. As the
storm subsided, Beetle fanned it afresh.
“Eh? What? What was that you were saying to MacLagan?”
“I only said I thought the papers ought to have been looked at before
they were given out, sir.”
“Hear, hear!” from a back bench. Mr. King wished to know whether Beetle
took it upon himself personally to conduct the traditions of the school.
His zeal for knowledge ate up another fifteen minutes, during which the
prefects showed unmistakable signs of boredom.
“Oh, it was a giddy time,” said Beetle, afterwards, in dismantled Number
Five. “He gibbered a bit, and I kept him on the gibber, and then he
dictated about a half of Dolabella & Co.”
“Good old Dolabella! Friend of mine. Yes?” said Stalky, pensively.
“Then we had to ask him how every other word was spelt, of course, and
he gibbered a lot more. He cursed me and MacLagan (Mac played up like a
trump) and Randall, and the ‘materialized ignorance of the unscholarly
middle classes,’ ‘lust for mere marks,’ and all the rest. It was what
you might call a final exhibition--a last attack--a giddy par-ergon.”
“But o’ course he was blind squiffy when he wrote the paper. I hope you
explained _that_?” said Stalky.
“Oh, yes. I told Tulke so. I said an immoral prefect an’ a drunken
house-master were legitimate inferences. Tulke nearly blubbed. He’s
awfully shy of us since Mary’s time.”
Tulke preserved that modesty till the last moment--till the
journey-money had been paid, and the boys were filling the brakes that
took them to the station. Then the three tenderly constrained him to
wait a while.
“You see, Tulke, you may be a prefect,” said Stalky, “but I’ve left the
Coll. Do you see, Tulke, dear?”
“Yes, I see. Don’t bear malice, Stalky.”
“Stalky? Curse your impudence, you young cub,” shouted Stalky,
magnificent in top-hat, stiff collar, spats, and high-waisted,
snuff-colored ulster. “I want you to understand that _I’m_ Mister
Corkran, an’ you’re a dirty little schoolboy.”
“Besides bein’ frabjously immoral,” said McTurk. “Wonder you aren’t
ashamed to foist your company on pure-minded boys like us.”
“Come on, Tulke,’ cried Naughten, from the prefects’ brake.
“Yes, we’re comin’. Shove up and make room, you Collegers. You’ve all
got to be back next term, with your ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘Oh, sir,’ an’ ‘No
sir’ an’ ‘Please sir’; but before we say good-by we’re going to tell you
a little story. Go on, Dickie” (this to the driver); “we’re quite ready.
Kick that hat-box under the seat, an’ don’t crowd your Uncle Stalky.”
“As nice a lot of high-minded youngsters as you’d wish to see,” said
McTurk, gazing round with bland patronage. “A trifle immoral, but
then--boys will be boys. It’s no good tryin’ to look stuffy, Carson.
_Mister_ Corkran will now oblige with the story of Tulke an’ Mary Yeo!”