There was no stopping Jimmy’s snoring. Pokes and kicks only intensified the noise, so at last we let him lie and I went on in a doleful key to the end.
“Oh, it ain’t so very bad after all!” said Jack Penny, in his slow drawl. “I call it a good night’s work.”
“Good, Jack?”
“Yes. Well, ain’t it?” he drawled. “Why, you’ve got back safe, and you don’t know that the doctor won’t get back, and you’ve done what you came to do—you’ve found your father.”
“But—but suppose, Jack Penny,” I said, “they—they do him some injury for what has passed.”
“’Tain’t likely,” drawled Jack. “They’ve kept him all this time, why should they want to—well, kill him—that’s what you’re afraid of now?”
“Yes,” I said sadly.
“Gammon! ’tain’t likely. If you’d got an old kangaroo in a big cage, and the young kangaroo came and tried to get him away you wouldn’t go and kill the old kangaroo for it?”
“No, no,” I said.
“Of course not. I didn’t mean to call your father an old kangaroo, Joe Carstairs. I only meant it to be an instance like. I say, do kick that fellow for snoring so.”