's vile bad form."

"Cough it up, ducky!" McTurk said calmly.

"I--I want to know what you chaps are doing out of bounds?" This with an
important flourish of his ground-ash.

"Ah," said Stalky. "Now we're gettin' at it. Why didn't you ask that
before?"

"Well, I ask it now. What are you doing?"

"We're admiring you, Tulke," said Stalky. "We think you're no end of a
fine chap, don't we?"

"We do! We do!" A dog-cart with some girls in it swept round the corner,
and Stalky promptly kneeled before Tulke in the attitude of prayer; so
Tulke turned a color.

"I've reason to believe--" he began.

"Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!" shouted Beetle, after the manner of Bideford's town
crier, "Tulke has reason to believe! Three cheers for Tulke!"

They were given. "It's all our giddy admiration," said Stalky. "You know
how we love you, Tulke. We love you so much we think you ought to go
home and die. You're too good to live, Tulke."

"Yes," said McTurk. "Do oblige us by dyin'. Think how lovely you'd look
stuffed!"

Tulke swept up the road with an unpleasant glare in his eye.

"That means a prefects' meeting--sure pop," said Stalky. "Honor of the
Sixth involved, and all the rest of it. Tulke'll write notes all this
afternoon, and Carson will call us up after tea. They daren't overlook
that."

"Bet you a bob he follows us!" said McTurk. "He's King's pet, and it's
scalps to both of 'em if we're caught out. We must be virtuous."

"Then I move we go to Mother Yeo's for a last gorge. We owe her about
ten bob, and Mary'll weep sore when she knows we're leaving," said
Beetle.

"She gave me an awful wipe on the head last time--Mary," said Stalky.

"She does if you don't duck," said McTurk. "But she generally kisses one
back. Let's try Mother Yeo."

They sought a little bottle-windowed half dairy, half restaurant, a
dark-brewed, two-hundred-year-old house, at the head of a narrow side
street. They had patronized it from the days of their fagdom, and were
very much friends at home.

"We've come to pay our debts, mother," said Stalky, sliding his arm
round the fifty-six-inch waist of the mistress of the establishment. "To
pay our debts and say good-by--and--and we're awf'ly hungry."

"Aie!" said Mother Yeo, "makkin' love to me! I'm shaamed of 'ee."

"'Rackon us wouldn't du no such thing if Mary was here," said McTurk,
lapsing into the broad North Devon that the boys used on their
campaigns.

"Who'm takin' my name in vain?" The inn