"Oh, dash it all, Todd," said Cotton, in a white rage, "you are a bounder! Think I'd sell my side?" he demanded furiously.
"Ah!" said Gus, delighted at having got through Cotton's skin. "You don't stomach insults any more than I do. Then why do you ladle them out so jolly freely to me?"
"That was a particularly low one," said Cotton angrily; "and anyway, you avaricious beggar, you've got thundering good terms, for it is hardly likely that Biffen's can really be cock-house. There's Corker's house, with Bourne and Hodgson and a few more good men. You're a sight more likely to see my three sovs, that I am yours."
"I hope so," said Gus, with some relief at the anticipation of this pleasant prospect.
Then the anger of the two simmered down, each having given and received some very choice compliments, and as these little breezes were usual between the two, ten minutes afterwards they were amiably entertaining each other. Cotton was putting up a pair of dumb-bells three hundred times, and his crony was counting and criticising his form. The Perry Exhibition did not enter Todd's head, but his bet—"such a gilt-edged one," he chuckled—was never once out of it. And Todd's bet had some momentous consequences for him, too.
CHAPTER VI
THE LAST CAP
While Acton was thus making such strenuous exertions to lift Biffen's out of the mire, Bourne was finding out the whole unpainted beauty of the situation—as far as it concerned himself.