Part 66

“On my honor,” gulped the persecuted one. “Oh, do stop him jawing.”

“Very good,” McTurk interjected. “We are compelled, of course, to accept your statement.”

“Confound it!” roared Naughten. “You aren’t head-prefect here, McTurk.”

“Oh, well,” returned the Irishman, “you know Tulke better than we do. I am only speaking for ourselves. We accept Tulke’s word. But all I can say is that if I’d been collared in a similarly disgustin’ situation, and had offered the same explanation Tulke has, I--I wonder what you’d have said. However, it seems on Tulke’s word of honor--”

“And Tulkus--beg pardon--kiss, of course---Tulkiss is an honorable man,” put in Stalky.

“--that the Sixth can’t protect ’emselves from bein’ kissed when they go for a walk!” cried Beetle, taking up the running with a rush. “Sweet business, isn’t it? Cheerful thing to tell the fags, ain’t it? We aren’t prefects, of course, but we aren’t kissed very much. Don’t think that sort of thing ever enters our heads; does it, Stalky?”

“Oh, no!” said Stalky, turning aside to hide his emotions. McTurk’s face merely expressed lofty contempt and a little weariness.

“Well, you seem to know a lot about it,” interposed a prefect.

“Can’t help it--when you chaps shove it under our noses.” Beetle dropped into a drawling parody of King’s most biting colloquial style--the gentle rain after the thunder-storm. “Well, it’s all very sufficiently vile and disgraceful, isn’t it? I don’t know who comes out of it worst: Tulke, who happens to have been caught; or the other fellows who haven’t. And we--” here he wheeled fiercely on the other two--“we’ve got to stand up and be jawed by them because we’ve disturbed their intrigues.”

“Hang it! I only wanted to give you a word of warning,” said Carson, thereby handing himself bound to the enemy.

“Warn? You?” This with the air of one who finds loathsome gifts in his locker. “Carson, would you be good enough to tell us what conceivable thing there is that you are entitled to warn us about after this exposure? Warn? Oh, it’s a little too much! Let’s go somewhere where it’s clean.”

The door banged behind their outraged innocence.

“Oh, Beetle! Beetle! Beetle! Golden Beetle!” sobbed Stalky, hurling himself on Beetle’s panting bosom as soon as they reached the study. “However did you do it?”

“Dear-r man” said McTurk, embracing Beetle’s head with both arms, while he swayed it to and fro on the neck, in time to this ancient burden--

“Pretty lips--sweeter than--cherry or plum. Always look--jolly and--never look glum; Seem to say--Come away. Kissy!--come, come! Yummy-yum! Yummy-yum! Yummy-yum-yum!”

“Look out. You’ll smash my gig-lamps,” puffed Beetle, emerging. “Wasn’t it glorious? Didn’t I ‘Eric’ ’em splendidly? Did you spot my cribs from King? Oh, blow!” His countenance clouded. “There’s one adjective I didn’t use--obscene. Don’t know how I forgot that. It’s one of King’s pet ones, too.”

“Never mind. They’ll be sendin’ ambassadors round in half a shake to beg us not to tell the school. It’s a deuced serious business for them,” said McTurk. “Poor Sixth--poor old Sixth!”

“Immoral young rips,” Stalky snorted. “What an example to pure-souled boys like you and me!”

And the Sixth in Carson’s study sat aghast, glowering at Tulke, who was on the edge of tears. “Well,” said the head-prefect acidly. “You’ve made a pretty average ghastly mess of it, Tulke.”

“Why--why didn’t you lick that young devil Beetle before he began jawing?” Tulke wailed.

“I knew there’d be a row,” said a prefect of Prout’s house. “But you would insist on the meeting, Tulke.”

“Yes, and a fat lot of good it’s done us,” said Naughten. “They come in here and jaw our heads off when we ought to be jawin’ them. Beetle talks to us as if we were a lot of blackguards and--and all that. And when they’ve hung us up to dry, they go out and slam the door like a house-master. All your fault, Tulke.”

“But I didn’t kiss her.”

“You ass! If you’d said you had and stuck to it, it would have been ten times better than what you did,” Naughten retorted. “Now they’ll tell the whole school--and Beetle’ll make up a lot of beastly rhymes and nick-names.”

“But, hang it, she kissed me!” Outside of his work, Tulke’s mind moved slowly.

“I’m not thinking of you. I’m thinking of us. I’ll go up to their study and see if I can make ’em keep quiet!”

“Tulke’s awf’ly cut up about this business,” Naughten began, ingratiatingly, when he found Beetle.

“Who’s kissed him this time?”