“I don’t, Bill,” I cried; “it’s that hay. Look here, it’s sticking to my clothes.”
“Then, what ha’ yer been sleeping under haystacks for, when here was your own bed waiting for you? That’s the way. That’s the first step to being a rogue and a vagabond. Do you know, young fellow, as I could have taken you and locked you up, and had you afore the magistrates next morning, if I’d found you lying under haystacks?”
“What a dear old stupid you are, Bill,” I cried, half angry, half amused; for he had talked so fast and been in such a rage, that I could not get a chance to explain.
“Am I?” he cried, just as if I had added fresh fuel to the flame. “If I am—I’m honest, so now then. That’s more than your Mr Hallett can say. But I haven’t done with him yet.”
“Why don’t you be quiet, Bill?” I said.
“Quiet, when you get out on larks?”
“You won’t let me speak.”
“Let you speak! No, I won’t. Here have I been worried to death about you, thinking all the chaps had got on, and that the van was upset, and all the time it was your games.”
“We went strolling about the forest, Bill,” I said, as I removed my stockings and bathed my sore feet, “and had to walk ever so much of the way home, and that’s what made me so late.”
He snatched up my boots from where I had set them, and found that they were covered with dust.