They scrambled up with recovered
tempers, and at the sight of an indignant housemaid rushed in a
general stampede to the two large attics opening into one another,
which served as the lair of the Folly lads. There, while struggling,
with Jock's assistance, to pull off his boots, Allen explained how he
had been waylaid "by a beast in velveteens," and walked off to the
nearest gate.
"Will he summons you, Ali? We'll all go and see the Grand Turk in
the dock," cried Jock.
"Don't flatter yourself; he wouldn't think of it."
"How much did you fork out?" asked Bobus.
Allen declaimed in the last refinement of Eton slang (carefully
treasured up by the others for reproduction) against the spite of the
keeper, who he declared had grinned with malice as he turned him out
at a little back gate into a lane with a high stone wall on each
side, and two ruts running like torrents with water, leading in the
opposite direction to Kenminster, and ending in a bottom where he was
up to the ankles in red clay.
"The Eton boots, oh my!" cried Jock, falling backwards with one of
them, which he had just pulled off.
"And then," added Allen, "as I tried to get along under the wall by
the bank, what should a miserable stone do, but turn round with me
and send me squash into the mud and mire, floundering like a
hippopotamus.
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