the bar and the other fixed on the Absolute, missed the psychological moment.
"I thuppothe there 'athen't been any trouble with any of thethe big waptheth to-day anywhere?" he asked, with an elaborate detachment of manner.
"Been too busy with your 'ens," said Fulcher.
"I thuppothe they've all gone in now anyhow," said Skinner.
"What—the 'ens?"
"I wath thinking of the waptheth more particularly," said Skinner.
And then with an air of circumspection that would have awakened suspicion in a week-old baby, and laying the accent heavily on most of the words he chose, he asked, "I thuppothe nobody 'athen't 'eard of any other big thingth about, 'ave they? Big dogth or catth or anything of that thort? Theemth to me if thereth big henth and big waptheth comin' on———"
He laughed with a fine pretence of talking idly.
But a brooding expression came upon the faces of the Hickleybrow men. Fulcher was the first to give their condensing thought the concrete shape of words.
"A cat to match them 'ens—" said Fulcher.
"Aye!" said Witherspoon, "a cat to match they 'ens."
"'Twould be a tiger," said Fulcher.
"More'n a tiger," said Witherspoon. . . .
When at last Skinner followed the lonely footpath over the swelling field that separated Hickleybrow from the sombre pine-shaded hollow in whose black shadows the gigantic canary creeper grappled silently with the Experimental Farm, he followed it alone.
50
