"

"Gi' me tuppence."

"I say, Beetle, you aren't stuffy about anything, are you?" said McTurk,
handing over the coppers. His tone was serious, for though Stalky often,
and McTurk occasionally, manoeuvred on his own account, Beetle had never
been known to do so in all the history of the confederacy.

"No, I'm not. I'm thinking."

"Well, we'll come, too," said Stalky, with a general's suspicion of his
aides.

"Don't want you."

"Oh, leave him alone. He's been taken worse with a poem," said McTurk.
"He'll go burbling down to the Pebbleridge and spit it all up in the
study when he comes back."

"Then why did he want the tuppence, Turkey? He's gettin' too beastly
independent. Hi! There's a bunny. No, it ain't. It's a cat, by Jove! You
plug first."

Twenty minutes later a boy with a straw hat at the back of his head, and
his hands in his pockets, was staring at workmen as they moved about
a half-finished cottage. He produced some ferocious tobacco, and
was passed from the forecourt into the interior, where he asked many
questions.

"Well, let's have your beastly epic," said Turkey, as they burst into
the study, to find Beetle deep in Viollet-le-Duc and some drawings.
"We've had no end of a lark."

"Epic? What epic? I've been down to the coastguard."

"No epic? Then we will slay you, O Beetle," said Stalky, moving to the
attack. "You've got something up your sleeve. _I_ know, when you talk in
that tone!"

"Your Uncle Beetle"--with an attempt to imitate Stalky's war-voice--"is
a great man."

"Oh, no; he jolly well isn't anything of the kind. You deceive yourself,
Beetle. Scrag him, Turkey!"

"A great man," Beetle gurgled from the floor. "_You_ are futile--look
out for my tie!--futile burblers. I am the Great Man. I gloat. Ouch!
Hear me!"

"Beetle, de-ah"--Stalky dropped unreservedly on Beetle's chest--"we love
you, an' you're a poet. If I ever said you were a doggaroo, I apologize;
but you know as well as we do that you can't do anything by yourself
without mucking it."

"I've got a notion."

"And you'll spoil the whole show if you don't tell your Uncle Stalky.
Cough it up, ducky, and we'll see what we can do. Notion, you fat
impostor--I knew you had a notion when you went away! Turkey said it was
a poem."

"I've found out how houses are built. Le' me get up. The floor-joists of
one room are the ceiling-joists of the room below."

"Don't be so filthy technical."

"Well, the man told me. The floor