“Oh my!” he ejaculated, as he gazed at me wildly; “there’s no getting out of this. Bathing won’t take a nose like that down. It ought to have on a big linseed meal poultice.”
“But you couldn’t breathe with a thing like that on.”
“Oh yes, you could,” he said, with the voice of authority. “You get two big swan quills, and cut them, and put one up each nostril, and then put on your plaster. That’s how my father does.”
“But you couldn’t go about like that.”
“No, you lie in bed on your back, and whistle every time you breathe.”
I laughed.
“Ah, it’s all very fine to laugh, but we shall be had up to the Doctor’s desk this morning, and he’ll want to know about the fighting.”
“Well, we must tell him, I suppose,” I said. “They began on us.”
“No,” said Mercer, shaking his head, and looking as depressed as I did when I woke; “that wouldn’t do here. The fellows never tell on each other, and we should be sent to Coventry. It’s precious hard to be licked, and then punished after, when you couldn’t help it, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “Then you won’t tell about Burr major and Dicksee.”