Page:Herbert Jenkins - Return of Alfred.djvu/122



SAY, are you the prod?"

Smith started, nearly overbalancing himself from the top of the gate, where for the last hour or more he had been smoking and meditating upon the photographs he had just seen in Mrs. Higgs's album. Gazing up at him stood a red-headed boy of about fourteen, his freckled features screwed up, either in interrogation or because the sun was in his eyes, Smith could not determine which.

"I say, are you the prod?" he repeated.

"The what?" queried Smith, recovering from his surprise.

"The prodigal, you know."

"I was afraid some vagrant husk would betray me," Jie smiled, as he proceeded to dig in the bowl of his pipe.

The boy stared, then he grinned.

"It must be rare sport being a prod," he remarked, as he proceeded to subject Smith to a thorough and un- embarrassed scrutiny, "although I suppose it's fairly rotten hanging about waiting for the what-you-call-it moment."

"It was, as you say, unspeakably rotten," Smith assured him gravely.

Again the boy regarded him with a puzzled expres- sion. 118 118