“Ouch!” ejaculated a voice from the interior, the word being one not to be found in the dictionaries, but which, in common parlance, means that a sensation too acute to be agreeable has been excited.
“Hey!—hello!—come out of that,” said Lynx, as soon as his nerves had recovered tranquillity. “You are in a bad box whoever you are.”
“Augh!” was the response, “no, I ain’t—I’m in a barrel.”
“No matter,” added Lynx, authoritatively; “getting into another man’s barrel unbeknownst to him in the night-time, is burglary.”
“That,” said Fydget, putting out his head like a terrapin, at which the women shrieked and retreated, and Lynx made a demonstration with his club—“that’s because you ain’t up to first principles—keep your stick out of my ribs—I’ve a plan, so there won’t be no burglary, which is this—no man have no more than he can use, and all other men mind their own business. Then, this ’ere barrel would be mine while I’m in it, and you’d be asleep—that’s the idea.”
“It’s a logo-fogie!” exclaimed Lynx with horror—“a right down logo-fogie!”
“Ah!” screamed the servants—“a logo-fogie!—how did it get out?—will it bite?—can’t you get a gun?”
“Don’t be fools—a logo-fogie is a sort of a man that don’t think as I do—wicked critters all such sort of people are,” said Lynx. “My lad, I’m pretty clear you’re a logo-fogie—you talk as if your respect for me and other venerable institutions was tantamount to very little. You’re a leveller I see, and wouldn’t mind knocking me down flat as a pancake, if so be you could run away and get out of this scrape—you’re a ’grarium, and would cut across the lot like a streak of lightning if you had a chance.”
“Mr. Lynx,” said the lady of the house from the head of the stairs—she had heard from one of the affrighted maids that a “logo-fogie” had been “captivated,” and that it could talk “just like a human”—“Mr. Lynx, don’t have anything to say to him. Take him out, and hand him over to the police. I’ll see that you are recompensed for your trouble.”
“Come out, then—you’re a bad chap—you wouldn’t mind voting against our side at the next election.”