“Ah! we have given it to him pretty often.”
Vince and Mike did not take to Young ’un or Youngster, as a sobriquet for Carnach junior, and consequently they invented quite a variety of names, which were chosen, not for the purpose of distinguishing the fat, flat-faced, rather pig-eyed youth from other people, but it must be owned for annoyance, and by way of retaliation for endless insults.
“You see, we must do something,” said Mike.
“Of course,” agreed Vince; “and I’m tired of making myself hot and knocking my knuckles about against his stupid head; and besides, it seems so blackguardly, as a doctor’s son, to be fighting a chap like that.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mike thoughtfully: “I shall be a Sir some day, I suppose.”
“What a game!” chuckled Vince—“Sir Michael Ladelle!”
“I don’t see anything to laugh at,” said Mike; “but, as I was saying, if we don’t lick him every now and then there’ll be no bearing it. He’ll get worse and worse.”
So it was to show their contempt for the young lout that they invented names for him—weakly, perhaps, but very boylike—and for a time he was James the Second, but the lad seemed rather to approve of that; and it was soon changed for Barnacle, which had the opposite effect, and two fights down in a sandy cave resulted, at intervals of a week, one with each of his enemies, after which the Barnacle lay down as usual, and cried into the sand, which acted, Vince said, like blotting paper.
Tar-pot, suggested by a begrimed appearance, lasted for months, and was succeeded by Doughy, and this again by Puffy, consequent upon the lad’s head having so peculiar a tendency to what home-made bread makers call “rise,” and as there was no baker on Cormorant Crag the term was familiar enough.
A whole string of forgotten names followed, but none of them stuck, for they did not irritate Carnach junior; but the right one in the boys’ eyes was found at last, upon a very hot day, following one upon which Vince and Mike had been prawning with stick and net among the rock pools under the cliffs,—and prawning under difficulties. For as they climbed along over, or waded amongst the fallen rocks detached from the towering heights above, Carnach junior, who had watched them descend, furnished himself with a creel full of heavy pebbles, and, making his way to the top of the cliffs, kept abreast and carefully out of sight, so as to annoy his natural enemies from time to time by dropping a stone into, or as near as he could manage to the little pool they were about to fish.