Caleb tried his last resource. Sleep was heavy on his eyelids, yet he managed to suffuse his pink podgy countenance with that bland, persuasive smile.
“It isn’t really worth more than two shillings, Bram, but as you’re my brother I don’t mind giving you three for it.”
Bram had one tintack left in his pocket. This he dug into Caleb’s fat leg.
“Ouch! You cad,” Caleb squealed. “You cad! You cad! What is it?”
“A tintack,” said Bram coolly. “Want it in again? No? All serene. Then hand over the bat.”
He retired with his rescued treasure to his own room, and for five minutes in the joy of repossession he practised playing forward and back to the most devilishly tricky bowling until at last he caught the leg of the bedstead a whack which clanged through the nocturnal quiet of Lebanon House like an alarm bell. Whereupon Bram hurriedly put out the gas and jumped into bed. People were right when they said he was very young for his age and wondered how Joshua Fuller ever produced such a flipperty-gibbet of a son.
The next morning was fine, and old Mrs. Fuller’s announcement that she was going to visit Bethesda threw the household into consternation.
“Mamma!” the eldest daughter gasped. “Why, you’ve never....”
Mrs. Fuller quelled poor Achsah instantly.
“Thank you, my dear, I am not yet in my dotage. I know precisely what I have done and what I have not done in my life.”