Chapter Ten.
That evening after tea, while Mercer and I were down by the gardens, where I found that somebody had been dancing a jig on my newly-raked beds, we heard a good deal of chattering and laughing over in the play-field, and Burr major’s voice dominating all the others so queerly that I laughed.
“I say, isn’t it rum!” said Mercer, joining in. “I hope we shan’t be like that by and by. Hodson is sometimes. There, hark!”
I listened, and Burr major was speaking sharply in a highly-pitched voice, that was all squeak, and then it descended suddenly into a gruff bass like a man’s.
“Do you know what old Reb said he was one day?” said Mercer, wiping his eyes, for a chance to laugh at his tyrant always afforded him the most profound satisfaction.
“No. A dandy?”
“A hobbledehoy! and he looks it, don’t he? It did make him so savage when he heard, and he said he wasn’t half such a hobbledehoy as old Reb was, and Dicksee said he’d go and tell.”
“And did he?”
“Did he? You know how my nose was swelled up.”
“Of course.”