“Then I’ll wait till you can,” said Joe, with a faint smile. “Oh, dear, how my heart does keep on beating!”
He turned with hand pressing his side and looked toward Hardock, for the man had moved, and he, too, sat up and began searching in his pockets. And then, to the great disgust of the two boys, they saw him slowly bring out a short pipe and a brass tobacco-box, and then deliberately fill the former, take out his matches, strike a light, and begin to smoke.
“Look at that,” cried Joe, viciously.
“Yes; I’m looking,” said Gwyn, slowly, and speaking as if he were utterly exhausted. “I feel as if I wish I were strong enough to go and knock him over.”
“For laughing at us when we were in such a horrible fix? Yes; so do I. He’s an old beast; and when you feel better we’ll go and tell him so.”
“Let’s go now,” said Gwyn, rising stiffly. “I say, I feel wet and cold, and sore all over.”
Joe rose with more alacrity and clenched his fists, his teeth showing a little between his tightened lips.
“Why, Jolly,” said Gwyn, gravely, “you look as if you’d knocked the skin off your temper.”
“That’s just how I do feel,” cried the boy—“regularly raw. I want to have a row with old Sammy Hardock. It’s all his fault, our getting into such trouble; and first he stands there laughing at us when we were nearly gone, and now he sits there as if it hadn’t mattered a bit, and begins to smoke. I never hated anyone that I know of, but I do hate him now. He’s a beast.”
“Well, you said that before,” said Gwyn, slowly; and he shivered. “I say, Jolly, isn’t it rum that when you’re wet, if you stand in the sun, you feel cold?”