“Shut up! He’ll hear!”
“What’s the joke?” demanded a bullet-headed, black-eyed boy who sat near.
“What, didn’t I tell you, Dimsdale? Keep it close, won’t you? You see that chap with the eyeglass next to Grover. That’s Railsford, our new master—Marky, I call him. He’s engaged to Daisy, you know, my sister. Regular soup-ladles they are.”
Here Dig once more laughed beyond the bounds of discretion.
“What an ass you are, Dig!” expostulated Arthur; “you’ll get us in no end of a mess.”
“Awfully sorry—I can’t help. Tell Dimsdale about—you know.”
“Don’t go spreading it, though,” said Arthur, shutting his eyes to the fact that he was confiding his secret to the greatest gossip in Grandcourt, and that one or two other heads were also craned forward to hear the joke. “I caught them going it like one o’clock in the hotel garden at Lucerne—it was the first time I twigged what was up; and what do you think he called my sister?”
“What?” they all demanded.
“Keep it close, I say. Ha, ha!—give you a guess all round; Dig knows.”
“Pussy cat,” suggested one.