"A skipping-rope, sir?"
"Yes. Didn't you know? Skipping is one of the most beneficial exercises any one could indulge in. It brings into play I forget exactly how many muscles, develops a perfect co-ordination between the brain, the eye, the hands and feet; and if you ever go to Oxford, I dare say you'll see on any college lawn all the brainiest men of the rising generation skipping about under the eyes of their revered tutors. If the mountains could skip like rams, as we're told they did, there's nothing surprising in a future Prime Minister skipping like a giddy goat, is there? And there are hundreds of future Prime Ministers imbibing the milk of academic instruction at Oxford to-day."
Blevins had listened with a stare of puzzlement. The short, chubby youth appeared to be serious; his companion's face showed no flicker of a smile; yet the general dealer, remembering what his assistant had told him, had a dim suspicion that he was dealing either with a joker or with a lunatic. To get rid of his dilemma he confined himself to the severely practical.
"Well, sir," he said, "I don't keep skipping-ropes as such, but I've a cord which the neighbours do make clothes-line of."
"The very thing!" cried Pratt. "We haven't made any arrangements about our washing, and, as laundry prices have gone up beyond all bearing, we may have to do our own. Of course we shall want a clothes-line for hanging out our shirts and things on, and as my friends are regular nuts, and possess a very extensive wardrobe, we shall want a long line--quite fifty yards. Add ten yards for a skipping-rope, that makes sixty; we'll take sixty yards, Mr. Blevins; and as you can't possibly make a neat parcel of that, you'd better twist 'em round the hefty frame of my friend here; sort of bandolier, you know."
The man proceeded to measure out the cord from a bale which he rolled from his back premises.
"You be camping on No Man's Island, 'tis said," he remarked.
"We are," replied Pratt. "We're followers of the simple life; fresh air, cold water, and plain fare. We drink nothing stronger than ginger-beer, and eat nothing more luxurious than macaroons, and I suppose we can't get even them in a place like this? What's the consequence? We never have bad dreams, like people who stuff themselves and sleep in stuffy rooms."
"And you haven't been troubled by the sounds, sir?"
"What sounds?"