Then Jerrold carried him on his back with his hands clasped under Colin's soft hips. Colin's body slipped every minute and had to be jerked up again; and when it slipped his arms tightened round Jerrold's neck, strangling him.
At last Jerrold, too, staggered and stumbled and stopped dead.
"I'll take him," said Eliot. He forbore, nobly, to say "I told you so."
And by turns they carried him, from the valley of the Windlode to the valley of the Speed, past Hayes Mill, through Lower Speed, Upper Speed, and up the fields to Wyck Manor. Then up the stairs to the schoolroom, pursued by their mother's cries.
"Oh Col-Col, my little Col-Col! What have you done to him, Eliot?"
Eliot bore it like a lamb.
Only after they had left Colin in the schoolroom, he turned on Jerrold.
"Some day," he said, "Col-Col will be a perfect nuisance. Then you and
Anne'll have to pay for it."
"Why me and Anne?"
"Because you'll both be fools enough to keep on giving in to him."