“Who said you was?” he cried, with a sharp look round behind him.
“Nor yet hares, Magg,” cried Mercer.
“Now look ye here,” said the fellow appealingly, “it’s too bad on you two chuckin’ things in a man’s face like that now. Ain’t I always getting a honest living? You talk like that, and somebody’ll be thinkin’ I go porching.”
“So you do,” said Mercer.
“What, porch?”
“Yes. I know. Bob Hopley says so too.”
“Only hark at him,” cried Magglin, “talking like that! Why, Bob Hopley’s a chap as must do something to show for his wage, and he’d take any man’s character away. He hate me, he do.”
“Yes, and you hate him, Magg,” I said.
The fellow turned on me sharply, but a curiously ugly smile began to make curves like parentheses at the corners of his lips, and he showed his teeth directly after.
“Well, I ain’t so very fond of him,” he said. “But look here, there ain’t no harm in a rabbid, and I was looking out for you two to ast if you’d like to meet me, just by accident like, somewheers down to this side o’ High Pines, where the sandhills is. There’s a wonderful lot o’ rabbids there just now.”