“If one of those brasted birds ‘ave pecked ‘er,” began Mr. Witherspoon and left the full horror to their unaided imaginations....
It appeared to the meeting at the time that it would be an interesting end to an eventful day to go on with Skinner and see if anything had happened to Mrs. Skinner. One never knows what luck one may have when accidents are at large. But Skinner, standing at the bar and drinking his hot gin and water, with one eye roving over the things at the back of the bar and the other fixed on the Absolute, missed the psychological moment.
“I thuppothe there ‘athen’t been any trouble with any of thethe big waptheth to-day anywhere?” he asked, with an elaborate detachment of manner.
“Been too busy with your ‘ens,” said Fulcher.
“I thuppothe they’ve all gone in now anyhow,” said Skinner.
“What—the ‘ens?”
“I wath thinking of the waptheth more particularly,” said Skinner.
And then, with, an air of circumspection that would have awakened suspicion in a week-old baby, and laying the accent heavily on most of the words he chose, he asked, “I thuppothe nobody ‘athn’t ‘eard of any other big thingth, about, ‘ave they? Big dogth or catth or anything of that thort? Theemth to me if thereth big henth and big waptheth comin’ on—”
He laughed with a fine pretence of talking idly.
But a brooding expression came upon the faces of the Hickleybrow men. Fulcher was the first to give their condensing thought the concrete shape of words.