“Haw! haw! haw!” roared Ephraim. “Soak it to um, Hans! Ain’t they havin’ a regular picnic with us! Ho! ho! ho! This is more fun than hoein’ ’taters!”
“Stop it!” cried Rattleton, gasping for breath. “You blundering Dutchman turn that hose——Woogh-uh-oogh-uh—oogh!”
The stream from the hose had struck Harry full and fair in the mouth, and he was nearly drowned.
“Oi’ll murther thot Dutch chaze!” shouted Mulloy. “Oi won’t lave a whole bone in his body! Oi’ll—— Wa-ow! Murther! Boo! Thot’s cold! It’s dead Oi am intoirely!”
“Hello, Parney!” called Hans, mockingly; “how you don’d like dot ghost pusiness, hey? Don’d id peen vunny!”
“Thunder and guns!” roared Browning. “This will give me another Arkansaw chill! Somebody will get hurt when I find out who put up this job on me!”
Hodge and Diamond made a desperate attempt to get away, but Hans saw them, and gave them a straight shot that knocked them down again in the midst of the struggling, squirming, kicking and shouting lads.
“Great Cæsar!” cried Kenneth St. Ives, as he untangled himself from the drenched and kicking mass. “The joke is on us!”
“It looks that way from the road,” admitted Frank, who was laughing heartily as he crowded his body back into a corner to get away from the water. “That confounded Yankee was too sharp to be taken in, and he put up this job with Hans. Goodness! hear him laugh!”
Ephraim was haw-hawing in a manner that told how delighted he was, and the roly-poly Dutch boy was dancing up and down on the bed, as he continued to drench the shivering, scrambling, shouting lads in the alcove.