whom no one has a higher regard than myself,
I will, if you will allow me, explain the grossness--the unparalleled
enormity--the appalling fetor of the stenches (I believe in the good old
Anglo-Saxon word), stenches, sir, with which you have seen fit to infect
your house... Oh, bother! I've forgotten the rest, but it was very
beautiful. Aren't you grateful to us for laborin' with you this way,
Rattray? Lots of chaps 'ud never have taken the trouble, but we're
grateful, Rattray."

"Yes, we're horrid grateful," grunted McTurk. "We don't forget that
soap. We're polite. Why ain't you polite, Rat?"

"Hallo!" Stalky cantered up, his cap over one eye. "Exhortin' the
Whiffers, eh? I'm afraid they're too far gone to repent. Rattray!
White! Perowne! Malpas! No answer. This is distressin'. This is truly
distressin'. Bring out your dead, you glandered lepers!"

"You think yourself funny, don't you?" said Rattray, stung from his
dignity by this last. "It's only a rat or something under the floor.
We're going to have it up to-morrow."

"Don't try to shuffle it off on a poor dumb animal, and dead, too. I
loathe prevarication. 'Pon my soul, Rattray--"

"Hold on. The Hartoffles never said 'Pon my soul' in all his little
life," said Beetle critically.

("Ah!" said Prout to little Hartopp.)

"Upon my word, sir, upon my word, sir, I expected better things of you,
Rattray. Why can you not own up to your misdeeds like a man? Have _I_
ever shown any lack of confidence in _you_?"

("It's not brutality," murmured little Hartopp, as though answering a
question no one had asked. "It's boy; only boy.")

"And this was the house," Stalky changed from a pecking, fluttering
voice to tragic earnestness. "This was the--the--open cesspit that dared
to call us 'stinkers.' And now--and now, it tries to shelter itself
behind a dead rat. You annoy me, Rattray. You disgust me! You irritate
me unspeakably! Thank Heaven, I am a man of equable temper--"

("This is to your address, Macrea," said Prout.

"I fear so, I fear so.")

"Or I should scarcely be able to contain myself before your mocking
visage."

"_Cave_!" in an undertone. Beetle had spied King sailing down the
corridor.

"And what may you be doing here, my little friends?" the house-master
began. "I had a fleeting notion--correct me if I am wrong" (the
listeners with one accord choked)--"that if I found you outside my house
I should visit you with dire pains and penalties."

"We wer