“Ah! The learned Lipsius is airing himself, is he? His Royal Highness has gone to fumigate.” McTurk climbed on the railings, where he held forth like the never-wearied rook.
“Now in all the Coll. there was no stink like the stink of King’s house, for it stank vehemently and none knew what to make of it. Save King. And he washed the fags privatim et seriatim. In the fishpools of Hesbon washed he them, with an apron about his loins.”
“Shut up, you mad Irishman!” There was the sound of a golf-ball spurting up gravel.
“It’s no good getting wrathy, Rattray. We’ve come to jape with you. Come on, Beetle. They’re all at home. You can wind ’em.”
“Where’s the Pomposo Stinkadore? ’Tisn’t safe for a pure-souled, high-minded boy to be seen round his house these days. Gone out, has he? Never mind. I’ll do the best I can, Rattray. I’m in loco parentis just now.”
(“One for you, Prout,” whispered Macrea, for this was Mr. Prout’s pet phrase.)
“I have a few words to impart to you, my young friend. We will discourse together a while.”
Here the listening Prout sputtered: Beetle, in a strained voice, had chosen a favorite gambit of King’s.
“I repeat, Master Rattray, we will confer, and the matter of our discourse shall not be stinks, for that is a loathsome and obscene word. We will, with your good leave—granted, I trust, Master Rattray, granted, I trust—study this—this scabrous upheaval of latent demoralization. What impresses me most is not so much the blatant indecency with which you swagger abroad under your load of putrescence” (you must imagine this discourse punctuated with golf-balls, but old Rattray was ever a bad shot) “as the cynical immorality with which you revel in your abhorrent aromas. Far be it from me to interfere with another’s house—”
(“Good Lord!” said Prout, “but this is King.”