“Blanket, monsieur.”
“Good. And—”
“A capote, monsieur.”
“And—”
“An axe—”
“Stop, stop!” shouted Harry Somerville from his desk. “Here’s an entry in Louis’s account that I can’t make out—30 something or other; what can it have been?”
“How often,” said Mactavish, going up to him with a look of annoyance—“how often have I told you, Mr Somerville, not to leave an entry half finished on any account!”
“I didn’t know that I left it so,” said Harry, twisting his features and scratching his head in great perplexity. “What can it have been? 30—30—not blankets, eh?” (Harry was becoming banteringly bitter.) “He couldn’t have got thirty guns, could he? or thirty knives, or thirty copper kettles?”
“Perhaps it was thirty pounds of tea,” suggested Charley.
“No doubt it was thirty pipes,” said Peter Mactavish.