“And then, before he knows what’s happening, they’ll switch his gun out of his hands, give him a few hard kicks, and just treat him like a dog. Oh! it fairly makes my blood boil just to think of it,” Giraffe went on to say, while he frowned, and gnashed his teeth in a way that must have seriously alarmed the objects of his detestation, could they have been near enough to see and hear.
But unfortunately it was all wasted, for both Hank and Pierre were miles away at the time.
“What’s that yonder?” exclaimed Thad, startling the others.
“Would you believe it, looks like an old stake and rider country fence, left alone to go to the waste years ago?” Allan announced, after taking a look.
“Well, that’s a sign we’re getting near some village, I take it,” declared Step Hen.
Giraffe laughed aloud when he heard this.
“Why, what a goose you are, Step Hen,” he remarked, bluntly.
“Oh! am I? See any down coming along?” demanded the other, warmly.
“Sure I do—on your upper lip,” Giraffe went on. “Noticed it only the other day; and thought then that if you keep on for a dozen years or so, we’ll expect you to be sportin’ as fine a moustache as the one old Jerry William has been coaxing along this half century. You know, the Cranford boys liken it to a baseball game, because there are nine on one side and nine on the other.”
“But why was I silly when I said we might run across a village up here?” Step Hen persisted, being just bound to know.