"Ye've kissed Jan," she laughed, "and she'll maybe tak effielinza and—and get a holiday."
Then I kissed Annie and the others three times, and they all went out laughing. The tears came into my eyes ... but then I was weak and ill.
XVII.
I object to the type of man who practises practical jokes. Young Mackenzie and Jim Brown have just played a nasty one on Willie Baffers, the village lunatic. Poor Willie invented a new aeroplane; he took an old solid-tyred boneshaker bicycle and fixed feathers to the spokes. Mackenzie and Brown inspected the invention, and told Willie that his fortune was as good as made.
Next morning the post brought a letter to Willie from the Munitions Ministry, offering him four million pounds and threepence hapenny for the patent rights, and asking Willie to meet a representative at the Royal Hotel in the town. Willie rode the old bike into town, and feathered it in the hotel yard. Mackenzie with a false beard on, handed him a cheque for the four millions, and Willie ran nearly all the eight miles home to tell of his good fortune.
Macdonald told me the yarn to-night as a rich joke, but I failed to find any humour in it. It was a low-down trick.
"Good Lord!" I cried, "neither of them is much more intelligent than Willie. Any man of average ability could take them in as easily as they took in poor Baffers."