"I say, Jan, though, haven't I had a fright?"
Jan, at the moment, was searching in the prescription-book. He raised his eyes, and looked over the counter. Master Cheese's face had turned white, and drops of wet were pouring off it—in spite of his bravery.
"What have you been at?" asked Jan.
"I saw the thing they are talking about, Jan. It is Fred Massingbird's."
Jan grinned. That Master Cheese's fright was genuine, there could be no mistaking, and it amused Jan excessively.
"What had you been taking?" asked he, in his incredulity.
"I had taken nothing," retorted Master Cheese, who did not like the ridicule. "I had not had the opportunity of taking anything—unless it was your medicine. Catch me tapping that! Look here, Jan. I was coming by Crow Corner, when I saw a something standing back in the hedge. I thought it was some poaching fellow hiding there, and went up to dislodge him. Didn't I wish myself up in the skies? It was the face of Fred Massingbird."
"The face of your fancy," slightingly returned Jan.
"I swear it was, then! There! There's no mistaking him. The hedgehog on his cheek looked larger and blacker than ever."
Master Cheese did not fail to talk of this abroad; the surgery boy, Bob, who had listened with open ears, did not fail to talk of it, and it spread throughout Deerham; additional testimony to that already accumulated. In a few days' time, the commotion was at its height; nearly the only persons who remained in ignorance of the reported facts being the master and mistress of Verner's Pride, and those connected with them, relatives on either side.