“Bobby, wh-why?” Donnie breathed at him. “We d-didn’t have t-time to ask him up there, M-Mrs. M-Morgan.”
“Time! Gosh! I beg your pardon, Mrs. Morgan!”
“I don’t mind slang a bit,” I reassured the genius. “But I do want to know what happened.”
The genius had the floor. “You see, Mrs. Morgan, when we came out of the portage he was right there; he had only just heard us because of the noise of the rapids.” So far Mr. Harriman’s speech was of irreproachable formality, but with that the rush of the tale caught him. “So there the sad old goat was lepping from rock to rock in his kilties, like a Sabine maiden escaping from her lovers. But such lepps no maiden ever put up, Sabine or otherwise; he looked like he had a hundred legs and all of ’em—excuse me, Mrs. Morgan, beg pardon—I should say that when we emerged from the woods and when Bob became aware of us—Oh, holy cats!” The English as she is wrote left the boy again. “Oh, gee! He lepp one too many and slid on a rock and rolled down clawing and scraping. Did you scrape, Bobby?”
“Did I?” murmured Bob, and patted his anatomy.
“He went into the p-pool with a waterspout, and I’m afr-fr-fraid he got wet,” Donnie put in. “Then he l-landed.”
“He didn’t; you’ve skipped the best,” Buck interrupted. “He tried to land and to rise like Venus from the waves—sort of, don’t you know, Mrs. Morgan. And we, being naturally irritated, chastised him with rocks. Not many, Mrs. Morgan; just a few soft little ones to remind him that he ought to be glad to see us. Remember we threw rocks at you, Bobby?”
“Rocks! Gosh! Look at my shins!” responded Bob mournfully.
“Anyway,” Buck went on, “then he landed, us pelting him with mud, at that time—gobboons of mud. Where he landed there was a pile of sticks and stuff—”
“Old chaussée de castor, beaver dam,” Bob hastened to explain learnedly.