Billy shut his lips tight and walked along with a sinking heart.
"Isn't he a sulky brat?" said Little Bug Bear, "pouting along and not saying a word."
"But you told me to stop talking," said Billy.
"Don't be impertinent," said Big Bug Bear, shaking him. "If you can't speak politely to your elders you needn't speak at all."
My, my, how Billy did hate the Bug Bears for that! Pinching and beating, anything he had been through could not have hurt him worse than this treatment. The Bug Bears seemed to know it, for they bullied him back and forth, and forth and back until he thought he would go crazy.
"Here we are at last," said Big Bug Bear, stopping in front of a prison-like Derby House.
"Yes, and if this boy hadn't lagged so on the way, we'd have been here an hour ago," said another Bug Bear crossly. "Get in with you." And giving Billy a push through the door, he and the rest followed close after.
Indoors they were greeted by another Bug Bear. Greeted is hardly the word, because that seems to mean some kind of a smile or a pleasant hand shake. As it was, the Bug Bear got up sulkily from a corner where he had been lying and grunted by way of "how do you do."
"We've got Billy Bounce," said Big Bug Bear.
"Huh! at last—it took you long enough, goodness knows," said the first speaker surlily.