“My Hat! Yes. Of course,” he murmured. “Your Uncle Stalky—a doocid good name. Your Uncle Stalky is no end of a stalker. He’s a Great Man. I swear he is. De Vitré, you’re an ass—a putrid ass.”
De Vitré would have denied this but for the assenting murmurs from Parsons and Orrin.
“You needn’t rub it in, then.”
“But I do. I does. You are such a woppin’ ass. D’you know it? Think over it a bit at prep. Think it up in bed. Oblige me by thinkin’ of it every half hour till further notice. Gummy! What an ass you are! But your Uncle Stalky”—he picked up the form-room poker and beat it against the mantelpiece—“is a Great Man!”
“Hear, hear,” said Beetle and McTurk, who had fought under that general.
“Isn’t your Uncle Stalky a great man, De Vitré? Speak the truth, you fat-headed old impostor.”
“Yes,” said De Vitré, deserted by all his band. “I—I suppose he is.”
“’Mustn’t suppose. Is he?”
“Well, he is.”
“A Great Man?”