“Here, I say, what’s the joke over there, Claverton?” cried Armitage. “Roll it down this end.”
“I was only telling Miss Strange about you tumbling into the puddle yonder, Jack,” answered he.
“Did he? When? How? Do tell us, Mr Claverton,” cried Gertie Wray.
“Oh, hang it, that’s not fair,” growled he most concerned.
“Well, he and Hicks went fishing here one Sunday. They were told that only naughty little boys went fishing on Sunday; but anyhow they went, and so were bound to come to grief, and come to grief they did—at least one of them did. The other was spared that he might take warning by it. Friend Jack, finding it slow, I suppose, lay down on that first flat rock and went to sleep, and—presto!—he found himself floundering in deep water.”
“You weren’t there,” retorted Jack.
“No; else you would not have been here to-day, for I should have deserved well of the State by leaving you in the deep. But the story goes that Hicks was so immensely tickled by the circumstance as to be unable for some time to render any help to poor Jack, who in consequence was nearly drowned, for the rock is perpendicular, and high out of the water, as you see. My impression is, that Hicks, likewise, wae in the land of Nod; but if so, no historian was present to record the fact.”
There was a laugh all round at Armitage’s expense, and amid the clatter of knives and forks, and the popping of corks, conversation and chaff waxed high.
“By the way, did any one go up to the cave?” asked Mr Brathwaite, suddenly.
“No, I think not,” replied Hicks. While others inquired: “What cave?”