“On my honour, Pannell, I’ll never tell a soul that you made the trap, not for ten years, or twenty, if you like.”
“That’s enough,” he said, giving his leg a slap. “Haw, haw, haw, haw, haw! Here, give us the model. When dyer want it, lad?”
“As soon as ever you can get it made, Pannell.”
He looked at me with his face working, and scraping a hole in the ashes he buried the trap, seized hammer and pincers, and worked away again, but stopped every now and then to laugh.
“I say,” he said suddenly, “it’ll sarve ’em right; but if they knowed as I did it they’d wait for me coming home and give me the knobsticks. Ay, that they would.”
“But they will not know, Pannell,” I said. “It’s our secret, mind.”
“Hey, but I’d like to see the rat i’ the trap!” he whispered, after exploding with another fit of mirth.
“Let’s have the trap first,” I said. “I don’t know that I shall catch him then.”
“What are you going to bait with?” he said between two fierce attacks upon a piece of steel.
“Oh, I have not settled that yet!”