And bang went his ponderous fist on Colin's organs of Secretiveness and Acquisitiveness, until his head sung again throughout, like a seething caldron.
“That's right!” cried Miss Sowersoft; “make him feel; drag him up; my face burns with shame at him; I'm as hot as a scarlet-fever, I am—a young scoundrel!”
And Colin was pulled up on to the level of the garden, more like a half-killed rat than a half-grown human being.
“We'll know how this is, meesis,” said Mr. Palethorpe, when he had fairly landed his cargo. “I 'll see to the bottom of it before he goes into th' house. He sha'n't have a chance of being backed up in his impudence as he was t'other night.”
“Take him into the thrashing-barn,” advised Miss Sowersoft, “and we can have him there in private.”
Colin now found breath to put in a protest against the bill of indictment which they were preferring against him.
“I was not listening,” said he; “I was only writing a letter to my mother, I 'm sure!”
“What! at dark hour?” ejaculated Palethorpe with a laugh. “Come along, you young liar! you shan't escape that way.” Accordingly he dragged the lad up the garden, and behind the house, into the spacious barn, of which Miss Sowersoft had spoken: and, while that innocent lady went to procure a lantern, her favourite held him tightly by the collar; save when, occasionally, to beguile the time until her return, he regaled him with a severe shake, and an additional curse or two upon his vagabond and mischievous carcass.
“Do you think he knows anything about it?” asked Miss Sowersoft aside to Palethorpe, as she entered the barn, and the dim light of her horn-lantern summoned to view the spectral appearances—rather than the distinct objects themselves—of various implements of husbandry, and of heaps of thrashed wheat and straw scattered around.
“Well, I don't know; but I should think not much,” said he.