"Why, I was comin up the lane, when all of a sudden—pop! bang! They set on me—ten hundud times ten hundud of um. But I beat um off—and I killed um all." And he bubbled his eyes and whispered—"There was some true live blood."
Then Baby whistled as she did his nose with her handkerchief, and said,
"Strikes me, you are the bravest in all the world—only Tiny."
But when the Commander-in-Chief heard that, he slapped Baby's hand away, and scrambled to his feet, and bowed up and down with a sort of a smile, saying,
"Thank-ku," and went away down the lane with his hump up high: for it only rose when he was in a temper.
39
But St Jack was not the only one who was growing old in That Country about now.
For the Others, who had never been young, were aging very rapidly, because of Phyllis, who scolded them when they didn't work, and cuffed them when they did.
So one evening when Phyllis had run down to little old Lollypop for some fruit for supper (for you have pretty well all fruit in the summer in That Country) the Others came and stood in a row before Baby on the lawn, and said,
"Please, 'M," and the rest, like they do in Abroad; and let go a tear they had got ready.