“Regular shame!” said Gwyn. “I’ve been longing for this day so as to have a regular examination. It must be a wonderful place, Joe. Quite a maze.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Joe, superciliously; “just a long hole, and when you’ve seen one bit you’ve seen all.”
“That’s what the fox said to the grapes,” said Gwyn, with a laugh.
“No, he didn’t; he said they were sour.”
“Never mind; it’s just your way. The place will be wonderful. There are sure to be plenty of crystals and stalactites and wonderful caverns and places. Oh, I do wish we were going down.”
“I don’t know that I do now—the place will be horribly damp.”
“Fox again.”
“Look here, Gwyn Pendarve, if you wish to quarrel, say so, and I’ll go somewhere else.”
“But I don’t want to quarrel, Joseph Jollivet, Esquire,” said Gwyn, imitating the other’s stilted way of speaking. “What’s the good of quarrelling with you?”
Joe picked up a stone and threw it as far as he could, so as to get rid of some of his irritability; and Grip, who had been sitting watching the boys, wondering what was the matter, went off helter-skelter, found the stone, and brought it back crackling against his sharp white teeth, dropped it at Joe’s feet, and began to dance about and make leaps from the ground, barking, as if saying, “Throw it again—throw it again!”