Chapter Six.
Further Festivity.
“Near thing that,” I said.
“Near thing? By Jove, I believe you!” echoed Falkner, who had halted, considerably out of wind and temper; the latter not improved by certain scarcely smothered and half-averted laughs which escaped some of the spectators. “Why I do believe the infernal sweeps are having the grin of me,” he added, scowling at them.
“We’ll enter into the joke yourself, just as you would have done if it had been some other fellow. That would have struck you as funny, eh? and this strikes them. They don’t mean anything by it.”
“Oh well, I suppose not,” he growled, and I felt relieved, for he was quite capable of kicking up some silly row then and there, which would have been unpleasant, if not worse.
“Let’s go back,” I suggested. “The noble savage engaged in the most congenial occupation of his heart, that of butchery, is not seen at his best.”
“I should think not. Look at those fellows over there. Why they’re beginning on the stuff raw. Nasty beggars!”