Jeremy freed his arm, and remained sulkier than ever. Ernest looked hurt, and the look softened the other.
“Well, of course, if you won’t tell me, there is nothing more to be said;” and he prepared to move off.
“As though you didn’t know!”
“Upon my honour I don’t.”
“Then if you’ll come in here, I will tell you;” and Jeremy opened the door of the little outhouse, where he stuffed his birds and kept his gun and collection of eggs and butterflies, and motioned Ernest majestically in.
He entered and seated himself upon the stuffing-table, gazing abstractedly at a bittern that Jeremy had shot about the time that this story opened, and which was now very moth-eaten, and waved one melancholy leg in the air in a way meant to be imposing, but only succeeded in being grotesque.
“Well, what is it?” he interrogated of the glassy eye of the decaying bittern.
Jeremy turned his broad back upon Ernest—he felt that he could speak better on such a subject with his back turned—and, addressing empty space before him, said:
“I think it was precious unkind of you.”
“What was precious unkind?”