"I lig you take it off. Don' lig soach dark-black shiny thing."
"You 've got good taste," said Bob, with a spiteful fling of the garment.
"Oh, how your modder will be angery!"
She fetched the garment from the corner.
"Oh! you gitting it full cob-things."
Which was quite imaginary there was no such thing as a cobweb in the house.
"Sa-ay! Tha' 's a foanny kind clothes!"
She peered at Bob from between the parted tails. It made Bob laugh a little.
"Ah-h-h! Tha' 's nize. 'When you laugh the demons skeered away.'"
She had rendered the proverb with great freedom.
"Now, then! How you are brave once more! "
For Bob's bearing had grown fearfully determined.
The rehearsal of the speech went on.
For, to elucidate a little, the coat was a swallowtail, Bob's first, and the occasion was not merely one of Mrs. Rawlins's Thursday "things" (to quote from Bob's and Kohana-San's private vocabulary), but a much more solemn affair—nothing less, in short, than a going-away party for Bob,
