"It's perfectly awful the noise you children are making. I'm tired out with it."
Jerrold flung himself on her. "Tired? What must we be?"
But he wasn't tired. His madness still worked in him. It sought some supreme expression.
"What can we play at next?" said Anne.
"What can we play at next?" said Colin.
"Something quiet, for goodness sake," said his mother.
They were very quiet, Jerrold and Anne and Colin, as they set the booby-trap for Pinkney. Very quiet as they watched Pinkney's innocent approach. The sponge caught him—with a delightful, squelching flump—full and fair on the top of his sleek head.
Anne shrieked with delight. "Oh Jerry, did you hear him say 'Damn'?"
They rushed back to the library to tell Eliot. But Eliot couldn't see that it was funny. He said it was a rotten thing to do.
"When he's a servant and can't do anything to us."