Stalky Co. | Page 7

not fit to live in the same county
with a God-fearin' fox. An' a vixen, too--at this time o' year!"
"Did ye come up on purpose to tell me this?"
"Of course I did, ye silly man," with a stamp of the foot. "Would you
not have done as much for me if you'd seen that thing happen on my
land, now?"
Forgotten--forgotten was the College and the decency due to elders!
McTurk was treading again the barren purple mountains of the rainy
West coast, where in his holidays he was viceroy of four thousand
naked acres, only son of a three-hundred-year-old house, lord of a
crazy fishing-boat, and the idol of his father's shiftless tenantry. It was
the landed man speaking to his equal--deep calling to deep--and the
old gentleman acknowledged the cry.
"I apologize," said he. "I apologize unreservedly--to you, and to the
Old Country. Now, will you be good enough to tell me your story?"
"We were in your combe," McTurk began, and he told his tale
alternately as a schoolboy and, when the iniquity of the thing overcame
him, as an indignant squire; concluding: "So you see he must be in the
habit of it. I--we---one never wants to accuse a neighbor's man; but I
took the liberty in this case--"

"I see. Quite so. For a reason ye had. Infamous---oh, infamous!"
The two had fallen into step beside each other on the lawn, and Colonel
Dabney was talking as one man to another. "This comes of promoting a
fisherman--a fisherman--from his lobster-pots. It's enough to ruin the
reputation of an archangel. Don't attempt to deny it. It is! Your father
has brought you up well. He has. I'd much like the pleasure of his
acquaintance. Very much, indeed. And these young gentlemen? English
they are. Don't attempt to deny it. They came up with you, too?
Extraordinary! Extraordinary, now! In the present state of education I
shouldn't have thought any three boys would be well enough grounded.
But out of the mouths of--No--no! Not that by any odds. Don't attempt
to deny it. Ye're not! Sherry always catches me under the liver,
but--beer, now? Eh? What d'you say to beer, and something to eat? It's
long since I was a boy--abominable nuisances; but exceptions prove
the rule. And a vixen, too!" They were fed on the terrace by a
gray-haired housekeeper. Stalky and Beetle merely ate, but McTurk
with bright eyes continued a free and lofty discourse; and ever the old
gentleman treated him as a brother.
"My dear man, of course ye can come again. Did I not say exceptions
prove the rule? The lower combe? Man, dear, anywhere ye please, so
long as you do not disturb my pheasants. The two are not incompatible.
Don't attempt to deny it. They're not! I'll never allow another gun,
though. Come and go as ye please. I'll not see you, and ye needn't see
me. Ye've been well brought up. Another glass of beer, now? I tell you a
fisherman he was and a fisherman he shall be to-night again. He shall!
Wish I could drown him. I'll convoy you to the Lodge. My people are
not precisely--ah--broke to boy, but they'll know you again."
He dismissed them with many compliments by the high Lodge-gate in
the split-oak park palings and they stood still; even Stalky, who had
played second, not to say a dumb, fiddle, regarding McTurk as one
from another world. The two glasses of strong home-brewed had
brought a melancholy upon the boy, for, slowly strolling with his hands
in his pockets, he crooned:--" Oh, Paddy dear, and did ye hear the
news that's goin' round?"

Under other circumstances Stalky and Beetle would have fallen upon
him, for that song was barred utterly--anathema--the sin of witchcraft.
But seeing what he had wrought, they danced round him in silence,
waiting till it pleased him to touch earth.
The tea-bell rang when they were still half a mile from College.
McTurk shivered and came out of dreams. The glory of his holiday
estate had left him. He was a Colleger of the College, speaking English
once more.
"Turkey, it was immense!" said Stalky, generously. "I didn't know you
had it in you. You've got us a hut for the rest of the term, where we
simply can't be collared. Fids! Fids! Oh, Fids! I gloat! Hear me gloat!"
They spun wildly on their heels, jodeling after the accepted manner of a
"gloat," which is not unremotely allied to the primitive man's song of
triumph, and dropped down the hill by the path from the gasometer just
in time to meet their house-master, who had spent the afternoon
watching their abandoned hut in the "wuzzy."
Unluckily, all Mr. Prout's imagination leaned to the darker side of life,
and