Page:Poor Cecco - 1925.djvu/42

34 “Then if you say that,” said Tubby indignantly, “it’s just the same as saying you wish I had never been invented!”

“I do!” cried Bulka. “I do wish you’d never been invented, so Hinksman!”

“Oh! Oh!” shrieked Tubby. “Bulka’s being unkind to me!”

Poor Cecco had to stop digging.

“Can’t you two keep from quarrelling for one evening!” he exclaimed.

“Well, Tubby is so ucky!” said Bulka sulkily.

Now “ucky” is the very horridest word you can use about anybody—you can tell from the sound how horrid it is—and things were likely to have gone very badly had not Harlequin suddenly had an idea. This did not happen to him often; up to the present he had contented himself with dancing about and saying “Hey Presto” while the others worked, which did not assist matters much, but he felt now that this idea was too good to be wasted.

“Instead of digging the earth from under the stone,” he suggested, “why don’t we lift the stone off the treasure?”

Poor Cecco scratched his head. “That’s not a bad idea!”

“It’s what I told you all along,” put in the Money-Pig, “only no one listens to me!”

How to do it was the question. The stone was far too heavy to lift. All of them pushing together could not