“A chocolate one, perhaps?” said Steggles, but in such a humble, inquiring voice that Mathers couldn’t hit him.
“No, a tobacco one; and if you’ve got another pipe I’ll show you.”
“So will I,” I chimed in. Mathers’s lead was always good enough for me.
Steggles immediately lugged out two more pipes. He seemed to be stuffed with them.
“Get it well alight at the start,” he explained, handing a fusee.
“All right, all right, I know,” said Mathers. Soon we were at it like four chimneys, and Steggles praised us in such a way that we could take no offence.
“You’ve all smoked many a time and oft, I can see that,” he said.
Mathers spat about a good deal, and fancied tobacco was probably a fine steadier for the nerves before a football match; and Nubbs said he thought so too; and he also thought that after a little smoking one didn’t want to talk, but ought just to keep quiet and think of interesting things.
“It widens the mind,” said Steggles.
We tramped on rather silently for ten minutes till Nubbs spoke again. To our surprise his hopeful tone had changed, and we found he had turned a sort of putty-color, with blue lips. He said: