"
"Bother you, don't humbug and put me out.
"Old man, old man, if for aught thou wouldst hope,
Thy heart, purse, and gates thou must instantly ope.
Let me but-—"
"Get Mother Carey to write it," suggested his cousin John.
"No; she must know nothing about it," said Bobus.
"She'd think it a jolly lark," said Jock.
"When it's over," said Allen. "But it's one of the things that the
old ones are sure to stick at beforehand, if they are ever so
rational and jolly."
"'Tis a horrid pity she is not a fellow," sighed Johnny.
"And who'll do the verses?" said Rob.
"Oh, any fool can do them," returned Bobus. "The point is to bell
the cat."
"There'd be no getting in to act the midnight ghost," said Allen.
"No," said Jock; "but one could hide in the big rhododendron in the
wolf-skin rug, and jump out on him in his chair."
In Allen's railway rug, Jock rehearsed the scene, and was imitated if
not surpassed by both cousins; but Allen and Bobus declared that it
could not be carried out in the daylight.
"I could do it still better," said Jock, "if I blacked myself all
over, not only my face, but all the rest, and put on nothing but my
red flannel drawers and a turban. They'd take me for the ghost of
the little nigger he flogged to death, and Allen could write
something pathetic and stunning.
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