"What's that you say?" shouted the astonished and enraged Ted, who believed his slave was rising up in rebellion.
"Go chase yourself! I'm openin' as fast as I kin, an' if you talk till you're blind I aint agoin'
to hurry any faster!" Bobolink made Bud appear to say.
"Aint, hey? Just wait till I get hold of you, Bud Jones; if I don't make you eat them words, my name is mud!" exclaimed the furious leader, outside.
"Oh! I never said a word, Ted, sure I didn't!" cried Bud, still wrestling with the ashcans in the darkness, and kicking right and left at imaginary rats which he believed were advancing in a drove to snap at his shins.
"Oh! yes, tell that to the ducks, will you? Every feller here heard what you said, too. I'm goin' to make you eat it just as soon as I get hold of you!" declared the furious leader, still bruising his knuckles in useless attacks on the boards of the door.
Bud Jones was in the most terrible predicament of his whole life. Beset by innumerable fierce foes as he believed within, there was that big bully outside, only waiting for a chance to give him a thrashing he would never forget. And the mysterious voice that sounded exactly like his own, startled him; for, not being a friend of Bobolink's he probably never heard him give those strange imitations when making his voice appear to come from some other person.
"I've got hold of the last can, Ted!" he wailed, presently, after much tugging and another
series of wild kicks into space; though he sometimes bruised his toe by striking it against one of the ash receptacles near by; "and I'm going to open up now; but please don't touch me. I never said a word against you, Ted; it must have been the rats, I guess!"
Bobolink could hardly keep from bursting into a shout at this, for he knew that poor Bud must be very near a complete breakdown through fright.