“Pretty lips—sweeter than—cherry or plum.
Always look—jolly and—never look glum;
Seem to say—Come away. Kissy!—come, come!
Yummy-yum! Yummy-yum! Yummy-yum-yum!”
“Look out. You’ll smash my gig-lamps,” puffed Beetle, emerging. “Wasn’t it glorious? Didn’t I ‘Eric’ ’em splendidly? Did you spot my cribs from King? Oh, blow!” His countenance clouded. “There’s one adjective I didn’t use—obscene. Don’t know how I forgot that. It’s one of King’s pet ones, too.”
“Never mind. They’ll be sendin’ ambassadors round in half a shake to beg us not to tell the school. It’s a deuced serious business for them,” said McTurk. “Poor Sixth—poor old Sixth!”
“Immoral young rips,” Stalky snorted. “What an example to pure-souled boys like you and me!”
And the Sixth in Carson’s study sat aghast, glowering at Tulke, who was on the edge of tears. “Well,” said the head-prefect acidly. “You’ve made a pretty average ghastly mess of it, Tulke.”
“Why—why didn’t you lick that young devil Beetle before he began jawing?” Tulke wailed.
“I knew there’d be a row,” said a prefect of Prout’s house. “But you would insist on the meeting, Tulke.”
“Yes, and a fat lot of good it’s done us,” said Naughten. “They come in here and jaw our heads off when we ought to be jawin’ them. Beetle talks to us as if we were a lot of blackguards and—and all that. And when they’ve hung us up to dry, they go out and slam the door like a house-master. All your fault, Tulke.”
“But I didn’t kiss her.”
“You ass! If you’d said you had and stuck to it, it would have been ten times better than what you did,” Naughten retorted. “Now they’ll tell the whole school—and Beetle’ll make up a lot of beastly rhymes and nick-names.”