No answer.
“Where did you buy them, Gil?” said Macey again.
“Cuoz—duoz—ooze.”
“What!” cried Macey; and Distin and Vane both looked wonderingly at their fellow-pupil, who had made a peculiar incoherent guttural noise, faintly represented by the above words.
Then Vane began to laugh.
“What’s the matter, Gil?” he said.
Gilmore gave his neck a peculiar writhe, and his jaws a wrench.
“I wish you fellows wouldn’t bother,” he cried. “You, Macey, ought to know better: you give a chap that stickjaw stuff of yours, and then worry him to speak. Come by post, I said. From London.”
Distin gave vent to a contemptuous sniff, and it was seen that he was busily spreading tobacco on thin pieces of paper, and rolling them up into cigarettes with the nonchalant air of one used to such feats of dexterity, though, truth to tell, he fumbled over the task; and as he noticed that Vane was observing him with a quiet look of good-humoured contempt, his fingers grew hot and moist, and he nervously blundered over his task.
“Well,” he said with a vicious twang in his tones, “what are you staring at?”