"I was thankful to see him, I can tell you. Well, he undertook to square that poor bewildered bobby, and to take steps to get the road cleared and the hole filled up."
"How?"
"There is a street being mended just round the corner, and he said he would get the foreman of the gang, who is a relation of his wife's, to send a couple of men to put things right immediately. It's probably done by now."
"Then I suppose we may regard the incident as closed."
"Yes, I suppose so."
There was a silence.
"It was a bit of a failure at the finish," said Dicky meditatively, "but it was a success on the whole—what?"
"Rather!" said his fellow-conspirators.
"Our chief difficulty," continued Dicky, "was to decide on the exact type of drama to present. I was all for our dressing up as foreigners, and relaying an asphalte street. It would have been top-hole to trot about in list slippers and pat the hot asphalte down with those things they use. And think of the make-up!—curly moustaches and earrings! And we could have jabbered spoof Italian. But then old Robin here, who I must say has a headpiece on him, pointed out that the scenery and props would be much too expensive. We should want a cart with a bonfire in it and a sort of witches' cauldron on top, and all kinds of sticky stuff; so we gave up that scheme. We did not feel inclined to mess with gas-pipes or electric wires either, in case we burst ourselves up; so we finally decided to select some street with a wooden pavement, and maul it about generally for as long as we could. If we got interfered with by anybody official, we meant to talk some rot about the Borough Surveyor, and skedaddle if necessary. But it all worked beautifully!"
"Where did you get your tools and tent?"