“By heck! Flash is all right.”
“Then he walked back as slowly and dignifiedly as a minister,—isn’t ‘dignifiedly’ an awkward word? I wonder if it is right?”
“Never mind grammar, or spelling, whichever it is; what did Flash do?”
“He went up to Tom—he was still crouching against the house—”
“Like the lazy coward he is,” Billy tartly interrupted.
“O Billy, he’s so beautiful and so clever; and he put his nose up to Flash so gratefully. Flash just mewed again, low as before, and walked off round the house. And Tom went and ate his breakfast.”
“Well, old Tom’ll have to be cleverer than I ever saw him to pay for that.”
“You don’t like Sir Thomas because he’s a little indolent.”
“It’s plain lazy. He won’t even wash himself.”
“Yet he has more mind than Flash.”