“Hadn’t we better bunk, too, now?” said McTurk uneasily.
“Why? We’re all right. We haven’t done anything. I want to hear what old Vidley will say. Stop tweakin’, Turkey. Let ’em cool off. Golly! how that heifer danced! I swear I didn’t know cows could be so lively. We’re only just in time.”
“My Hat! Here’s Vidley—and Toowey,” said Beetle, as the two farmers strode into the yard.
“Gloats! oh, gloats! Fids! oh, fids! Hefty fids and gloats to us!” said Corkran.
These words, in their vocabulary, expressed the supreme of delight. “Gloats” implied more or less of personal triumph, “fids” was felicity in the abstract, and the boys were tasting both that day. Last joy of all, they had had the pleasure of Mr. Vidley’s acquaintance, albeit he did not love them. Toowey was more of a stranger, his orchards lying over-near to the public road.
Tom and Abraham together told a tale of stolen cattle maddened by overdriving; of cows sure to die in calving, and of milk that would never return; that made Mr. Vidley swear for three consecutive minutes in the speech of north Devon.
“’Tes tu bad. ’Tes tu bad,” said Toowey, consolingly; “let’s ’ope they ’aven’t took no great ’arm. They be wonderful wild, though.”
“’Tes all well for yeou, Toowey, that sells them dom Collegers seventy quart a week.”
“Eighty,” Toowey replied, with the meek triumph of one who has under-bidden his neighbour on public tender; “but that’s no odds to me. Yeou’m free to leather ’em saame as if they was yeour own sons. On my barn floor shall ’ee leather ’em.”
“Generous old pig!” said Beetle. “De Vitré ought to have stayed for this.”