“Wanted to throw him off his guard and book the devil-dodger for a venture. Besides, it wasn’t a parson, it was only that humbugging old Garthorpe, who goes about preaching, and—”
“I should have thought you had found out he wasn’t such an ass as he looked, Jack,” said Naylor, significantly.
Armitage looked rather foolish at this; and one or two who knew the joke tittered slightly.
“Hallo, what’s the jest? Trundle it up, Naylor, we don’t often catch Jack napping,” said Claverton.
“Oh, I’ll tell you myself,” exclaimed the victim of it, airily. “Well, you know, I was down at Thorman’s place one evening, and old Garthorpe came jogging up on that spindle-shanked nag of his. It was just about feeding time, so he off-saddled and got his head well into the trough in no time. Daring the evening we were talking a lot about the war scare, and the old chap stuck out that it was all bosh, in fact insinuated that we were a pack of funks. He wasn’t afraid of the Kafirs, he said, not one of them would hurt him, and so on. This rather put our backs up, you know; there was myself, and Johnson, and Gough, and a couple of Dutchmen, so we hit upon a little scheme to give the old fellow a bit of a funk when he left. It was as dark as pitch—”
“‘And smelt of cheese,’” put in Claverton. “Why not do justice to the quotation?”
“Confound it, if you can spin the yarn better than I can, do so, by all means,” retorted Armitage, in mock dudgeon.
“He wants to get out of it,” said Ethel. “It won’t do, though, we insist upon hearing it.”
“Well, then, as I was saying, when that fellow interrupted me, it was as dark as pitch, but the moon would soon be up. I and Johnson laid our heads together, and arranged that we two and Gough should blacken our faces and go and waylay old Garthorpe in the drift about half a mile from the house. Well, we slipped out one by one and got ourselves up in style, red blankets and all, looked as thorough-paced cut-throats as ever you clapped eyes on—”
“Can quite believe it,” murmured the former interrupter.