Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/107

 "What I say: the wrong end ain't the right 'un, I believes."

"Then you don't think the mulatto committed the murder?"

"From what that there sea captain said, I should say you ain't got no right to put thoughts into my head any more than words into my mouth."

"Come, Jerk," said the schoolmaster suavely, "no offence."

"Never said there was," replied Jerry.

"Then come and have a bite with me at my house, as there's no school to-day; I should be honoured, indeed I should," and the schoolmaster beamed upon him.

"Would you, though? I wonders?" mused the boy.

"Sorry to disappoint you," he added airily, "but I'm a-dinin' at the vicarage."

"Oh, with the vicar?"

"No, with the Shah of Persia." Then in a tone of supreme condescension he added: "I believes vicars lives in vicarages!"

"Ah—so—so! quite right!" returned the schoolmaster. "Doctor Syn, then, has asked you to dine?"

"Well, I don't see anything so very remarkable in that, do you?"

"Oh, not at all—all very right, proper, and pleasant."

"Well, it's right enough, you can lay to that, 'cos I tells you it is, and as to its being proper, well, I don't see as how it's improper, so I suppose it is; and as to