Isham Frederic Stewart
Nothing But the Truth

CHAPTER XI – FISHING

They had an afternoon of it, Bob and Dolly. Bob made himself useful, if not agreeable. He was a willing though not altogether cheerful slave. But the girl did not appear to mind that. She had spirits enough for both of them and ordered Bob around royally. She was nice to him, but she wanted him to know that he was her property, as much hers as if she had bought him at one of those old human auction sales. Only hers was a white slave!

She had the grandest time. She made him help her across the stream on a number of unnecessary occasions, holding the slave’s hand, so that she wouldn’t slip on the slippery stones. And once she had him carry her across. She had to, because there weren’t any stones, slippery or otherwise, she could avail herself of, at that particular spot. It is true she might have gone on a little farther and found some slippery stones that would have served her purpose, but she pretended not to know about them. Besides, what is the use of being a despot and having a private slave, all to yourself, if you don’t use him and make him work? Mr. Bennett wasn’t only a slave either, he was a romantic hero, as well, and in the books, heroes always carry the heroines across streams. Miss Dolly experienced a real bookish feeling when Bob carried her. He fully realized the popular ideal, he had such strong arms. True, he didn’t breathe on her neck, or in her ear, and he grasped her rather gingerly, but she found no fault over that. Her great big hero was a modest hero. But he was very manly and masculine, too.

He had plunged right in the stream, shoes and all, in spite of her suggestion that he had better take them off. But what cared he for wet feet? Might cause pneumonia, of course; but pneumonia had no terrors for Bob! She smiled at his precipitancy, while secretly approving of it. The act partook of a large gallantry. It reminded her of Sir Walter Raleigh and that cloak episode. Miss Dolly nestled very cozily, en route, with a warm young arm flung carelessly over a broad masculine shoulder and her eyes were dreamy, the way heroines’ eyes are in the books. She was not thinking of chimneys.

On the other side, she sat down, and imperiously – mistresses of slaves are always imperious – bade him take off her shoes. It was doubly exciting to vary the role of heroine with that of capricious slave-mistress. Of course, she might just as well have taken off her shoes on the other side and walked over but she never dreamed of doing that. After the slave had taken off her shoes, she herself removed her stockings, while the slave (seemingly cold and impassive as Angelo’s marble Greek slave) looked away. Then she dabbled her tiny white feet in the cold stream. She was thinking of that Undine heroine. Dabbling her feet, also made her feel bookish. Only in the books the heroes (or slaves) gaze adoringly at said feet. Hers were worth gazing at, but Bob didn’t seem to have eyes. Never mind! She told herself she liked that cold Anglo-Saxon phlegm (what an ugly word!) in a man. She saw in it a foil to her own temperamental disposition.

Having dabbled briefly, she held out a tiny foot and the slave dried it with his handkerchief, looking very handsome as he knelt before her. Then she put out the other and he repeated the operation. Then she put on her shoes and stockings. Then she remembered they had come ostensibly to fish and began whipping the stream spasmodically, while he did the same mechanically. They caught one or two speckled beauties, or Bob did. She couldn’t land hers. They always got tangled in something which she thought very cute of them. She didn’t feel annoyed at all when they got away, but just laughed as if it were the best kind of a joke, while Bob looked at her amazed. She called that“sport.”

Then she made him build a “cunning little fire” on a rock and clean the fish and cook them and set them before her. She graciously let him sit by her side and partake of a few overdone titbits and a sandwich or two they had brought in the basket. But she also made him jump up every once in a while to do something, finding plenty of pretexts to keep him busy. In fact, she had never been more waited upon in her life, which was just what she wanted. Bob, however, didn’t complain, for the minutes and hours went by and she asked no embarrassing questions. She didn’t make herself disagreeable in that respect, and as long as she didn’t, he didn’t mind helping her over rocks, or toting her. At least, this was a respite. His headache wasn’t quite so bad; the fresh air seemed to have helped it.

As for her thinking him one of those high-class society-burglars, or social buccaneers, it didn’t so much matter to him, after all. He was getting rather accustomed to the idea. Of course, she would be terribly disappointed if she ever found out he wasn’t one, but there didn’t seem much chance of his ever clearing himself, in her mind, of that unjust suspicion. At least, he reflected moodily, he was capable of making one person in the world not positively miserable. Last night when he had parted from Dickie, he had found a small grain of the same kind of comfort, in the fact the he (or truth) had not harmed Dickie. But to-day Dickie had appeared saddened by Dan’s and Clarence’s troubles. Then, too, Bob had been obliged to walk off, right in front of Dickie’s eyes with the temperamental young thing whom Dickie wanted to marry the worst way. And here he (Bob) was helping her over stones, “toting” frizzling trout for her, and performing a hundred other little services which should, by right, have been Dickie’s pleasure and privilege to perform.

Bob murmured a few idle regrets about Dickie, but Miss Dolly dismissed them – and Dickie – peremptorily. She was sitting now, leaning against a tree and the slave, by command, was lying at her feet.

“Did you know,” she said dreamily, “I am a new woman?”

He didn’t know it. He never would have dreamed it, and he told her so.

“Yes,” she observed, “I marched in the parade to Washington. That is, I started, went a mile or two, and then got tired. But I marched there, in principle, don’t you see? I think women should throw off their shackles. Don’t you?” Bob might have replied he didn’t know that Miss Dolly ever had had any shackles to throw off, but she didn’t give him time to reply. “I read a book the other day wherein the women do the proposing,” she went on. “It’s on an island and the women are ‘superwomen.’ All women are ‘super’ nowadays.” She regarded him tentatively. Her glance was appraising. “Do you know of any reason why women should not do the proposing, Mr. Bennett?”

“Can’t say that I do,” answered Bob gloomily, feeling as if some one had suddenly laid a cold hand on his breast, right over where the heart is. Her words had caused his thoughts to fly back to another. She might not be proposing to the hammer-thrower at that moment in that “super” fashion, but the chances were that the hammer-thrower was proposing to her. He didn’t look like a chap that would delay matters. He would strike while the iron was hot.

The temperamental young thing eyed Bob and then she eyed a dreamy-looking cloud. She let the fingers of one hand stray idly in Bob’s hair as he lay with his head in the grass.

“It tries hard to curl, doesn’t it?” she remarked irrelevantly.

“What?” said Bob absently, his mind about two miles and a half away.

“Your hair. You’ve got lovely hair.” Bob looked disgusted. “It started to curl and then changed its mind, didn’t it?” she giggled.

Bob muttered disagreeably.

“I suppose you were one of those curly-headed little boys?” went on the temperamental young thing.

“I don’t know whether I was or not,” he snapped. He was getting back into that snappy mood. Then it struck him this might not be quite the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, for he added sulkily; “Maybe I was.”

“I can just see you,” said the temperamental young thing in a far-off voice. “Nursie must have thought you a darling.”

The slave again muttered ominously. He wished the temperamental little thing would take her fingers away. They trailed now idly over an ear.

“You’re tickling,” said Bob ill-naturedly.

She stopped trailing and patted instead – very gently and carelessly – as if she were patting a big Newfoundland dog which she owned all by herself. That pat expressed a sense of ownership.

“I’m wondering,” she said, “whether it would make things nicer, if I did propose and we became engaged?”

“Oh,” said Bob satirically, “you’re wondering that, are you?”

“Yes.” More tentative pats.

“And what do you suppose I’d say?” he demanded. He was feeling more and more grouchy all the time. He didn’t want any of that “superwoman” business. He had already had one proposal. What mockery! A proposal! He heard again that other “Will you marry me?” and looked once more, in fancy, into the starry, enigmatical violet eyes. He experienced anew that surging sensation in his veins. And he awoke again to the hollow jest of those words! He felt, indeed, a moderately vivid duplication of all his emotions of the night before. The temperamental young thing’s voice recalled him from the poignant recollections of the painful past into the dreary and monotonous present.

“Why, you actually blushed, just now,” she said accusingly.

“Did I?” growled Bob, looking grudgingly into dark eyes where a moment before, in imagination, there had been starry violet ones.

“Yes, you did. And” – her voice taking a tenderer accent – “it was becoming, too.”

“Rush of blood to the head,” he retorted shortly. “Comes from lying like this.”

“What would you say if I did?” she demanded, reverting to that other topic. “Propose, I mean? Would you accept? Would you take me – I mean, shyly suffer me,” with a giggle, “to take you into my arms?”

“Quit joshing!” growled Bob.

“Answer. Would you?”

“No.”

“No?” Bending over him more closely. For a “super,” she was certainly wonderfully attractive in her slim young way at that moment. Not many of the inferior sex would have acted quite so stonily as Bob acted. He didn’t show any more emotion when she bent over than one of those prostrate stone Pharaohs, or Rameses, which lie around with immovable features on the sands of Egypt. “You see you couldn’t help it,” the super-temperamental young thing assured him, confidentially.

“Ouch!” said Bob, for she was tickling again. He wished she would keep those trailing fingers in her lap. They felt like a fly perambulating his brow or walking around his ear.

“You’d just have to accept me,” she added.

“Oh, you mean on account of that silly burglar business?”

“Of course. You left two or three thumb-prints in the room.”

“I did?” That was incriminating. No getting around thumb-prints! He felt as if the temperamental little thing was weaving a mesh around him. In addition to being a “super,” she was a Lady of Shalott.

Dolly thrilled with a sense of her power. She could play with poor Bob as a cat with a mouse; she could let him go so far and then put out her claws and draw him back.

“Besides, I found out you didn’t quite tell me the truth about those accomplices of yours,” she went on triumphantly. “You said there weren’t any, and when I went out and looked around where the dog barked, I found footprints. They led to the trellis, right up into your room. The trellis, too, showed some person, or persons, had climbed up, for some of the boughs were broken. Deny now, if you can, you had visitors last night,” she challenged him.

Bob didn’t deny; he lay there helpless.

“Of course,” she said with another giggle, “I might let you say you’ll think it over. I might not press you too hard at once for an answer. I don’t want you to reply: ‘This is so sudden,’ or anything like that.” She got up suddenly with a little delirious laugh. “But I simply can’t wait. You look so handsome when you’re cross. Besides, it will be so exciting to be engaged to a – a – ”

“Society-burglar – ” grimly.

“That’s it. I’ve never been engaged to a burglar before!”

“But you have been engaged?”

“Oh, yes. Lots of times. But not like this. This feels as if it might lead – ”

“To the altar?” Satirically.

“Yes.”

“But suppose I got caught? – that is, if I really enjoyed the distinction of being a burglar which I am not?”

“Then, of course, I never knew – you deceived me – poor innocent! – as well as the rest of the world. And there would be columns and columns in the papers. And some people would pity me, but most people would envy me. And I’d visit you in jail with a handkerchief to my eyes and be snap-shotted that way. And I’d sit in a dark corner in the court, looking pale and interesting. And the lady reporters would interview me and they’d publish my picture with yours – ‘Handsome Bob, the swell society yeggman. Member of one of the oldest families, etc.’ And – and – ”

“Great Scott!” cried Bob. She had that publicity-bee worse than Gee-gee. In another moment she’d be setting the day. “Shall we – ah! – retrace our steps?”

It was getting late. The hours had gone by somehow and as she offered no objections, they “retraced.” For some time now she was silent. Perhaps she was imagining herself too happy for words. Once or twice she cast a sidelong glance shyly at Bob. It was the look of a capricious slave-owner metamorphosed, through the power of love, into a yielding and dependent young maiden. Bob was supposed to be the brutal conqueror. Meanwhile that young man strode along unheedingly. He didn’t mind any little branches or bushes that happened to stand in his way and plowed right through them. It would have been the same, if he had met that historic bramble bush. A thousand scratches, more or less, wouldn’t count.

“You can put your arm around me now,” she observed, with another musical but detestable giggle, as they passed through a grove, not very far from the house. “It is quite customary here, you know.”

He didn’t know, but he obeyed. What else could he do?

“Now say something.” Her voice had once more that ownership accent.

“What do you want me to say?” None too graciously.

“The usual thing! Those three words that make the world go around.”

“But I don’t.” Even a worm will turn.

“You will.” Softly.

“I won’t.”

“Oh, yes, you will.” More softly. Then with a sigh: “This is the place. Under this oak, carved all over with hearts and things. Do it.”

“What?” He looked down on lips red as cherries.

“Are you going to?”

“And if I don’t?” he challenged her.

“Finger-prints!” she said. “Footmarks!”

“Oh, well! Confound it.” And he did – the way a bird pecks at a cherry.

She straightened with another giggle. “Our first!” she said.

“Hope you’re satisfied,” he remarked grudgingly.

“It will do for a beginning. Oh, dear! some one saw us!” He looked around with a start, his unresponsive arm slipping from about a pliant waist.

“I don’t see any one.”

“He’s dodged behind a tree. I think it was Dickie. And – yes, there are one or two other men. They – they seem to be dodging, too.” Bob saw them now. One, he was sure, was the commodore.

“Funny performance, isn’t it?” he said, with a sickly smile.

“Perhaps – ?” She looked at him with genuine awe in the temperamental eyes. He read her thought; she thought – believed they had “come for him.” She appeared positively startled, and – yes, sedulous! Maybe, she was discovering in herself a little bit of that “really, truly” feeling.

“Oh!” she said. “They mustn’t – ”

“Don’t you worry,” he reassured her. “I think I can safely promise you they won’t do what you expect them to.”

“You mean,” joyously, “you have a way to circumvent them?” She was sure now he had; the aristocratic burglars always have. He would probably have a long and varied career before him yet.

“I mean just what I say. But I think they want to talk with me? Indeed, I’m quite sure they do. They are coming up now. Perhaps you’d better leave me to deal with them.”

“You – you are sure they have no evidence to – ?”

“Land me in jail? Positively. I assure you, on my honor, you are the only living person who, by any stretch of the imagination, could offer damaging testimony against me, along that line.”

He spoke so confidently she felt it was the truth. “I believe you,” she said. She wanted to say more, befitting the thrill of the moment, but she had no time. Dickie and two others were approaching. It might be best if he met them alone. So she slipped away and walked toward the house. It would be quite exciting enough afterward, she told herself, to find out what happened. It wasn’t until she got almost to the house, that she remembered she ought to have asked Bob for a ring. Of course, he would have a goodly supply of them. Would it make her particeps criminis though, if she wore one of his rings? Then she concluded it wouldn’t, because she was innocent of intention. She didn’t know. She wondered, also, if she should announce her “engagement” right off, or wait a day or two. She decided to wait a day or two. But she told Miss Gwendoline Gerald what a lovely time she and Mr. Bennett had had together, fishing. And Miss Gerald smiled a cryptic smile.

Meanwhile Bob had met Dan and Dickie and Clarence.

CHAPTER XII – JUST ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER

It was far from a pleasant meeting. Dickie looked about as amiable as a wind or thunder demon, in front of a Japanese temple. That oscillatory performance beneath the “kissing-oak,” as the noble tree was called, had been almost too much for Dickie. He seemed to have trouble in articulating.

“You’re a nice one, aren’t you?” he managed at length to say, and his tones were like the splutter of a defective motor. “You ought to be given a leather medal.”

“Could I help it?” said Bob wearily. And then because he was too much of a gentleman to vouchsafe information incriminating a lady: “Usual place! Customary thing! Blame it on the oak! Ha! ha!” This wasn’t evading the truth; it was simply facetiousness. Might as well meet this trio of dodging brigands with a smiling face! Dickie’s vocal motor failed to explode, even spasmodically; that reply seemed to have extinguished him. But the commodore awoke to vivacity.

“Let us try to meet this situation calmly,” he said, red as a turkey-cock. “But let us walk as we talk,” taking Bob’s arm and leading that young man unresistingly down a path to the driveway to the village. “I shouldn’t by any chance want to encounter Mrs. Dan just yet,” he explained. “So if you don’t mind, we’ll get away from here, while I explain.”

Bob didn’t mind. He saw no guile in the commodore’s manner or words. Nor did he observe how Clarence looked at Dickie. The twilight shadows were beginning to fall.

“Briefly,” went on the commodore, as he steered them out of the woods, “our worst fears have been realized. Negotiations with Gee-gee are in progress. Divorce papers will probably follow.” Clarence on the other side of Dickie made a sound. “All this is your work.” The commodore seemed about to become savage, but he restrained himself. “No use speaking about that. Also, it is too late for us to call the wager off and pay up. Mischief’s done now.”

“Why not make a clean breast of everything?” suggested Bob. “Say it was a wager, and – ”

“A truth-telling stunt? That would help a lot.” Contemptuously.

Dickie muttered: “Bonehead!”

“I mean, you can say there wasn’t any harm,” said Bob desperately. “That it was all open and innocent!”

“Much good my saying that would do!” snorted Dan. “You don’t know Mrs. Dan.”

“Or Mrs. Clarence,” said Clarence weakly.

Bob hung his head.

“We’ve thought of one little expedient that may help,” observed Dan, still speaking with difficulty. “While such influences as we could summon are at work on the New York end, we’ve got to square matters here. We’ve got to account for your – your – ” here the commodore nearly choked – “extraordinary revelations.”

“But how,” said Bob patiently, “can you ‘account’ for them? I suppose you mean to make me out a liar?”

“Exactly,” from the commodore coolly.

“I don’t mind,” returned Bob wearily, “as long as it will help you out and I’m not one. Only I can’t say those things aren’t true.”

“You don’t have to,” said Dan succinctly. “There’s an easier way than that. No one would believe you, anyway, now.”

“That’s true.” Gloomily.

“All we need,” went on Dan, brightening a bit, “is your cooperation.”

“What can I do?”

“You don’t do anything. We do what is to be done. You just come along.”

“We take you into custody,” interposed Clarence.

“Lock you up!” exploded Dickie once more. “And a good job.”

“Lock me up?” Bob gazed at them, bewildered. Had the temperamental little thing “peached,” after all? Impossible! And yet if she hadn’t, how could Dan and Dickie and Clarence know he was a burglar – or rather, that a combination of unlucky circumstances made him seem one? Perhaps that kiss was a signal for them to step forward and take him. History was full of such kisses. And yet he would have sworn she was not that kind.

“You’re to come along without making a fuss,” said the commodore significantly.

“But I don’t want to come along. This is going too far,” remonstrated Bob. “I’ve a decided objection to being locked up as a burglar.”

“Burglar!” exclaimed Dan.

“Don’t know how you found out! Appearances may be against me, but,” stopping in the road, “if you want me to go along, you’ve got to make me.”

The trio looked at one another. “Maybe, he really is – ” suggested Dickie, touching his forehead.

“Too much truth!” said Clarence with a sneer. “Feel half that way, myself!”

“Would be all the better for us, if it were really so,” observed Dan. And to Bob: “You think that we think you’re a burglar?”

“Don’t you? Didn’t you say something about locking me up?”

“But not in a jail.”

Bob stared. “What then?”

“A sanatorium.”

“Sanatorium?”

“For the insane.”

“You mean – ?”

“You’re crazy,” said Dan. “That’s the ticket. Dickie found out, up at Mrs. Ralston’s.”

“Oh, Dickie did?” said Bob, looking at that young gentleman with lowering brows.

“You bet I did,” returned Dickie. “I put in a good day,” viciously, “while you were fishing.”

“Yes,” corroborated the commodore, “Dickie found a dozen people who think you’re dottie on the crumpet, all right.”

Bob folded his arms, still regarding Dickie. “You know what I’ve a mind to do to you?”

“Hold on!” said Dan hastily. “This matter’s got to be handled tactfully. We can’t, any one of us, give way to our personal feelings, however much we may want to. Let’s be businesslike. Eh, Clarence? Businesslike.”

“Sure,” said Clarence faintly.

But Dickie, standing behind the commodore and Clarence, said something about tact being a waste of time in some cases. He said it in such a sneering nasty way that Bob breathed deep.

“I’ve simply got to spank that little rooster,” he muttered.

But again the commodore smoothed things over. “Shut up, Dickie,” he said angrily. “You’ll spoil all. I’m sure Bob wants to help us out, if he can. He knows it’s really up to him, to do so. Bob’s a good sport.” It was an awful effort for the commodore to appear nice and amiable, but he managed to, for the moment. “You will help us out, won’t you?” he added, placing velvety fingers on Bob’s arm.

But Bob with a vigorous swing shook off those fingers. He didn’t intend being taken into custody. Dan and the others might as well understand that, first as last. The commodore’s voice grew more appealing.

“Don’t you see you’re being crazy will account for everything?”

“Oh, will it?” In a still small voice.

“Miss Gwendoline asked me if you’d showed signs before coming down here?” piped up Dickie. And again Bob breathed deep. Then his thoughts floated away. Dickie was too insignificant to bother with.

“Hallucinations!” observed the commodore briskly. “Fits you to a T!”

Bob didn’t answer. He was trying to think if she– Miss Gwendoline – hadn’t said something about hallucinations?

“You simply imagined all those things you confided to Mrs. Dan. You didn’t mean to tell what wasn’t so, but you couldn’t help yourself. You really believed it all, at the time. You are irresponsible.”

“Maybe you’ll tell me next there isn’t any Gee-gee,” said Bob. “Also, that Miss Gid-up is but an empty coinage of the brain?”

“No, we’ll do better than that. The existence of a Gee-gee accounts, in part, for your condition. First stage, Gee-gee on the brain; then, brain-storm! Gee-gee is part of your obsession!”

“You talk, think and dream of Gee-gee,” interposed Clarence. “We’ve got it all doped out. You are madly jealous. You imagine every man is in love with her. You even attribute to Dan here, ulterior motives.”

“I mentioned to Miss Gerald, privately, that a certain very fascinating but nameless young show-girl might be your trouble,” said Dickie.

Again Bob did a few deep-breathing exercises, and again he managed to conquer himself.

“Don’t you see we’ve simply got to lock you up?” said the commodore. “You’re a menace to the community; you’re a happy home-breaker. You may do something desperate.”

“I might,” said Bob, looking the commodore in the eye.

Dan overlooked any covert meaning. “We take your case in time,” he went on. “You go into an institution, stay a week, or two – or shall we say, three,” insinuatingly, “and you come out cured.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice?” said Bob. They were going to put truth in a crazy-house. That’s what it amounted to. “But how about Gid-up? Did I have an obsession about her, too?”

“Oh, as Gee-gee’s chum she is part of the brainstorm and that drags poor old Clarence in, – Clarence who is as ignorant of the existence of Gid-up as I am of Gee-gee.”

“And that’s the truth,” said Clarence stoutly.

Bob laughed. He couldn’t help it. Perhaps many of the people in jails and crazy-houses were only poor misguided mortals who had gone wrong looking for truth. Maybe some of them had met with that other kind of truth (Dan’s kind and Clarence’s kind) and they hadn’t the proper vision to see it was the truth (that is, the world’s truth).

“Got it fixed all right,” went on the commodore. “Doc, up there at the house, has written a letter to the head of an eminently respectable institution, for eminently respectable private patients. It’s not far away and the head is a friend of Doc’s. Dickie saw to the details. It’s a good place. Kind gentle attendants; nourishing food. Isn’t that what the Doc said, Dickie?”

“I guess the food won’t hurt him” said Dickie, regarding Bob. Maybe, Dickie wouldn’t have minded if Bob had had an attack, or two, of indigestion.

“Doc says they’re especially humane to the violent,” continued the commodore, unmindful of Bob’s ominous silence. It seemed as if Dan was talking to gain time, for he looked around where the bushes cast dark shadows, as if to locate some spot. “None of that slugging or straight-jacket business! Doc talked it over with the judge and some of the others. Judge said he’d committed a lot of people who hadn’t acted half as crazy as you have. You see Dickie had to take him into his confidence a little bit and the Doc, too. Doc diagnosed your breakdown as caused by drugs and alcohol.”

“So you made me out a dipsomaniac?” observed Bob.

“What else was there to do? Didn’t you bring it on yourself?”

Dan now stopped, not far from a clump of bushes. Down the road stood a stalled motor-car vaguely distinguishable in the dusk. Its occupant, or occupants had apparently gone to telephone for help.

“You bet I made you out a ‘dippy,’” said Dickie with much satisfaction.

A white light shone from Bob’s eyes. Then he shrugged his broad shoulders.

“Good night,” he said curtly and turned to go.

But at that instant the commodore emitted a low whistle and two men sprang out of the bushes. At the same moment the trio precipitated themselves, also, on Bob. It was a large load. He “landed” one or two on somebody and got one or two in return himself. Dickie rather forgot himself in the excitement of the moment and was unnecessarily forceful, considering the odds. But Bob was big and husky and for a little while he kept them all busy. His football training came in handy. Numbers, however, finally prevailed, and though he heaved and struggled, he had to go down. Then they sat on him, distributing themselves variously over his anatomy.

“Thought I was giving you that charming little chat, just for the pleasure of your company, did you?” panted the commodore, from somewhere about the upper part of Bob? “Why, I was just leading you here.”

“And he came like a lamb!” said Clarence, holding an arm.

“Or a big boob!” from Dickie, who had charge of a leg.

Bob gave a kick and it caught Dickie. The little man went bowling down the road like a ten-pin. But after that, there wasn’t much kick left in Bob. They tied him tight and bore him (or truth, trussed like a fowl), to the car. Some of them got in to keep him company. There wasn’t anything the matter with the car. It could speed up to about sixty, or seventy, at a pinch. It went “like sixty” now.

“If he tries to raise a hullabaloo, toot your horn,” said the commodore, when he got his breath, to the driver. “At the same time I’ll wave my hat and act like a cut-up. Then they’ll only take us for a party of fuzzled joy-riders.”

“I don’t think he’ll make much noise now,” shouted Dickie significantly, from behind. “We’ll jolly well see to that.”

“How long will it take you to make the bug-house?” the commodore asked the man at the wheel.

“We should reach the private sanatorium in less than an hour,” answered that individual.