"Heard 'em."
"When?"
"Just now, when you were asleep."
"Hah! Then that's it!" cried Phra; and it all came out.
The Siamese lad heard his companion to the end with a look of haughty contempt which made him look years older, and when he had finished he said slowly,—
"Poor silly idiots! Those are the sort of people who would say that a blowpipe was better than a rifle. What does it matter?"
"Matter? Why, it is bad for you and your father to be friendly with such people as we are."
"How absurd!" cried Phra. "The weak, silly, ignorant people are so stupid about things they do not understand."
"But these were not common, ignorant people, but noblemen."
"Very likely," said Phra, with a shrug of his shoulders. "It is as father says: many of the old noblemen of the other king's party are too proud to learn anything, and they pretend to believe he deals in magic and is mad."