Mr. Hicks, who frequently joined in the conversation when anything interested him, snorted from the kitchen doorway:
"Ill? You couldn't make him 'ill' with a club with nails in it—that feller."
"Oh, how dread-ful!" Aunt Lizzie clasped her hands, and looked at the brutal cook reprovingly.
"Perhaps one of us had better awaken him," Miss Eyester suggested. "He should eat something."
"Hor! Hor! Hor!" Mr. Hicks laughed raucously. "Maybe he don't feel like eating. Let him alone and he'll come out of it."
Miss Eyester resented the aspersion the meaning of which was now plain to everybody, and said with dignity, rising:
"If no one else will call him, I shall."
"Rum has been the curse of the nation," observed Mr. Budlong to whom even a thimbleful gave a headache.
"I wish I had a barrel of it," growled old Mr. Penrose. "When I get home I'm going to get me a worm and make moonshine."
"Oh, how dread-ful!"