Page:Love among the chickens (1909).djvu/307

 we should have got through our little business in half the time. We might both have been dry and clothed by now.

I endeavored to point this out to him.

"Don't talk to me, sir," he roared, hobbling off across the beach to his dressing tent. "I will not listen to you. I will have nothing to do with you. I consider you impudent, sir."

"I am sure it was unintentional, Mr. Derrick."

"Isch!" he said—being the first occasion and the last on which I ever heard that remarkable word proceed from the mouth of man.

And he vanished into his tent, while I, wading in once more, swam back to the Cob and put on my clothes.

And so home, as Pepys would have said, to breakfast, feeling depressed.