Bob nodded emphatically.
“How a chap can be as thin and long as that Thomas Cliffy and yet live beats me all hollow,” remarked Willie, as the four members of the household stood on the porch looking after the retreating figures. “Say, Cran, what’s a pocket edition, anyway?”
“Look in the mirror, and one will be staring you in the face,” snapped Cranny. “That’s all the satisfaction you’ll get.”
CHAPTER V
PREPARATIONS
“It seemed just like being in Kingswood again—to see those boys,” said Mrs. Beaumont, as she and her husband and the two lads gathered in the drawing-room. “What a fine, lively lot they are; and isn’t it positively extraordinary the way Tommy has popped up? Did you like them, Willie?”
“Oh, kinder; seemed a bit fresh to me.”
“Oh, Willie!”
“Well, I didn’t see anything remarkable about them. That fat one thinks a heap of himself, doesn’t he? Looks lazy, too. Better overhaul all the chairs he sat on; if they aren’t weakened, I’m surprised.”
But Cranny paid no attention. He had withdrawn to a far corner of the room, with his father, and was engaged in a low, earnest conversation.
“Willie doesn’t care to go—that is easily seen,” Mr. Beaumont was saying. His round, good-natured face lighted up with a quizzical expression, as he regarded Cranny’s doleful countenance. “Still, what Bob Somers said this evening has made me reconsider my determination not to let you go.”