“But it IS our cab,” persisted Mary. “Why, there’s Innocent’s yellow bag on the top of it.”
“Stand aside,” repeated Warner roughly. “And you, Mr. Moon, please be so obliging as to move a moment. Come, come! the sooner this ugly business is over the better—and how can we open the gate if you will keep leaning on it?”
Michael Moon looked at his long lean forefinger, and seemed to consider and reconsider this argument. “Yes,” he said at last; “but how can I lean on this gate if you keep on opening it?”
“Oh, get out of the way!” cried Warner, almost good-humouredly. “You can lean on the gate any time.”
“No,” said Moon reflectively. “Seldom the time and the place and the blue gate altogether; and it all depends whether you come of an old country family. My ancestors leaned on gates before any one had discovered how to open them.”
“Michael!” cried Arthur Inglewood in a kind of agony, “are you going to get out of the way?”
“Why, no; I think not,” said Michael, after some meditation, and swung himself slowly round, so that he confronted the company, while still, in a lounging attitude, occupying the path.
“Hullo!” he called out suddenly; “what are you doing to Mr. Smith?”
“Taking him away,” answered Warner shortly, “to be examined.”
“Matriculation?” asked Moon brightly.