"It's me," said Atwater. "I'm going out to see who threw that thing in."
"You're too late," said Frank. "Strike a light, somebody, and let's see what it is. It tumbled down here by my drum, I believe."
There was a general scratching of matches, and after a while the broken candle was set up and relighted.
"I swan to man," then said Tucket, "jest look at that jack-of-spades. He got it in the physiognomy wus'n I did. 'Alas, the mother that him bare, if she had been in presence there, in his greased cheeks and greasier hair, she had not known her child.'"
These words from Marmion, aptly altered to suit the occasion, Seth, who was not so green but that he knew pages of poetry by heart, repeated in a high-keyed, nasal sing-song, which set all the boys laughing.
"A pretty way, too, to turn up Jack, I should say," he added, in allusion to the candlestick,—a turnip, with a hole in it,—which had rolled over his cards.
In the mean time, Frank and Jack Winch were scrambling for the missile.
"Let me have it," snarled Jack.
"It's mine; my name was called when it was flung in," said Frank, maintaining his hold.
"Well, keep it, then!" said John. "It's nothing but a great wad of paper."