"Well," laughed the latter, "strong language isn't in my line any more than yours, Mr. Blinkers, so I'm afraid I can't oblige. I fancy, however, that if ever again anyone asks you or me the difference between a mountain badger and a prairie badger we'll be just a trifle shy at answering—eh, my friend?"
"'NO SNAPPING, YOU BRUTE,' CONTINUED THE PARSON."
The parson laughed outright: the fit of dudgeon was finally past. And when the two men left the stable yard arm-in-arm, the mischief-makers, who still remained discreetly invisible, could see the backs and shoulders of both of them fairly shaking with laughter.
Round the corner, the schoolmaster and the minister met the hotel-keeper standing at the front door of his hostelry; and with the greatest good humour in the world they told him the story. The joke was really too excellent to keep; moreover, it was sure to go the round of the whole town before the world was many hours older, so that the victims consulted their own personal comfort best by leading off the inevitable laugh, and so, in a measure at least, disarming ridicule.
"The whipper-snappers!" said the burly host, hardly knowing at first whether to condole with the dignitaries of church and school or to indulge the merriment that was bubbling up within him.
"Boys will be boys," remarked the parson, condescendingly.
"And the trick was cleverly done," added the schoolmaster, appreciatively. He was in reality too overjoyed at his own success in having hauled the parson into the pillory alongside of him to feel any resentment.
"Oh! well, we do need a laugh sometimes in this dull place," replied the hotel-keeper, allowing the broad smile hitherto repressed to suffuse his rubicund countenance. But he kept his mirth within moderate bounds so long as the others were in hearing. When they were gone, however, loud and long was his laughter.
"Dick, the little cuss!" he cried, slapping his thigh. "And Billy, that young varmint! It'll tickle his dad to death when he hears it. To fool the schoolmaster showed a bit of pluck. But to take down the passon—oh, lor!" And the jolly innkeeper laughed till his sides ached.