Percival is rather interested: "Well, who's going to sweep them? and sweep whom?"
"Ah!" says Mr. Hunt darkly. "Who? Makes yer boil."
"Well, I shouldn't worry, Hunt," says Percival, in the old "Have you got one of your poor sick yedaches?" tone. "I shouldn't, really. I feel angry sometimes, but you've only got to have a game of something, you know. There's Rollo! Come on down and help us to build that raft on Fir-Tree Pool. We'll have a jolly time. Rollo! Hunt's going to help us, so we can get that big plank down now! Come on, Hunt!"
He bounds away towards Rollo, and Mr. Hunt, watching before he starts to follow, says: "Ah, pity there's not more like you! You ought to ha' been one of them." He scowls horribly in the direction of Lady Burdon, who is waving to the boys from the door. "One o' them, you ought to ha' been. Makes yer boil!"
CHAPTER VI
JAPHRA AND IMA AND SNOW-WHITE-AND-ROSE-RED
I
And there were three new friends who contributed to this happy, happy time and who came vitally to contribute to later years. There were Japhra and Ima, who lived in a yellow caravan that was sometimes attached to that Maddox's Monster Menagerie and Royal Circus with which Mr. Hannaford traded in little 'orses; and there was Dora, whose mother was that Mrs. Espart of Abbey Royal at Upabbot over the Ridge who—as Miss Oxford had told Lady Burdon—did not send her little girl to lessons with Miss Purdie because of the post-office little boy.
Percival first met Japhra and Ima on a day not long after the end of Rollo's first visit, when—his playmate gone—he was temporarily a little lonely. He came upon them by Fir-Tree Pool, stepped through the belt of trees that surround the pool and halted in much delight at the entrancing sight his eyes gave him.