Bags’s inconvenient conscience and affection gave him a nasty prod at this. If David had only not said he was sorry he suspected him, he would not have felt so “beastly.” On the other hand, it was dangerous to try to stifle his internal beastliness by magnanimity, since this might lead to fresh suspicions on David’s part. But magnanimity salted with sarcasm might serve his turn.
“Oh, I don’t want to whack you,” he said, “as you say you were sorry. As if I should have touched your filthy stags! Clip their wings, and take them to Marchester next half, and see if Hughes is proud of his pal who keeps vermin.”
David stared in blank surprise. To forgo the pleasure of chastisement was not in the spirit of Shylock.
“Oh, well, thanks awfully,” he said. “If you don’t want to take your cuts, I’m sure I don’t mind not getting them. But why don’t you?”
Bags was struggling into his shirt, and speech was for the moment extinguished.
“Simply because the challenge was too silly for words,” he said, as his head emerged.
The repetition of this silly reason did exactly that which Bags desired should not happen. Suspicion, vague and unformulated as yet, again sprang up in David’s mind. Such magnanimity was simply childish.
“I think I’ll take the cuts then, Crabtree,” he said, to mark the complete severance of friendly relations.
That roused Bags: the rejection of his spurious, but highly superior, motives quite stifled the prods of his inconvenient conscience.
“All right, then, you shall,” he said. “Gosh! I’ll let into you. I’ll put beef into them, Blaize. I’ve got a racquet-handle that’ll do nicely. I bet I break it. You’ll want some liniment afterwards.”