“Hurt!” said Jack. He had picked himself up, and was rubbing his injuries with a comical air of bewilderment. “I’ll tell the world it hurt! I’m all on fire! Great Scott! she did lay it on!” His voice took on an unwonted note of reverence. “Judy, would you have thought she had it in her?”
“I would not,” said Judy. “And goodness knows, you kicked like a steer!”
“Well, I bet I don’t run up against Mother again, if I can help it,” Jack uttered. “I don’t want another licking like that. I don’t believe I’ll be able to ride for a week! Judy, I tell you she held me as if I was a bit of a kitten! I’m sore, but I tell you, I’m jolly proud of Mother!”
“Well, it’s a good thing that’s the way it makes you feel,” said Judy, regarding him with some amazement. “How about getting out that boat now? She won’t come back again. She’s up in the Tower room now, I bet, writing an article for the Americans on ‘How I Brought Up My Sons.’ Say we get the boat?”
“You don’t catch me sitting in any boat to-night,” returned her brother, still rubbing. “It’s light walking exercise for me for a bit, and just now I think I’ll take it to bed. Come along home: it must be awfully late, and there’s always the chance that she might come back. I say, Judy, wasn’t my yell a beauty!”
“It was,” agreed his sister. “But it was a mistaken yell.”
Jack nodded agreement.
“Well, you don’t catch me trying to attract Mother’s attention again,” he said. “She leaves her mark when you do attract it. Come along, Ju: I’m off to bed.”
There seemed no reason for me to show myself, when Mrs. McNab had dealt with the situation so thoroughly: I remained in my hiding-place while they clambered up the gully, a proceeding clearly fraught with pain in the case of Jack. Quite near me he paused.
“I say,” he said, “we’ve been pretty average annoying, a good many times. I wonder why she never did that before?”