"Y-yes, but we didn't understand."
"Well, you'd better have come. It's too late now." O'Flynn half dragged, half carried him up to the cabin, for he seemed unable to walk in his frozen trousers. The Colonel and the Boy by a common impulse went a little way in the opposite direction across the ice.
"What can we do, Colonel?"
"Nothing. It's not a bit o' use." They turned to go back.
"Well, the duckin' will be good for Potts' parki, anyhow," said the Boy in an angry and unsteady voice.
"What do you mean?"
"When he asked me to hand it to him I nearly stuck fast to it. It's all over syrup; and we don't wear furs at our meals."
"Tchah!" The Colonel stopped with a face of loathing.
"Yes, he was the only one of us that didn't bully the kid to-day."
"Couldn't go that far, but couldn't own up."