Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/87

 ; the other, "Shag" Sampson (so called by Lonely because of his ample mane of yellowish-brown hair), short-windedly combative, but both audacious and predaceous.

In return for these favors Lonely demanded periodic tutorship in the elements of English grammar, and with cramped-up fingers and strangely contorted face filled out Lionel's unused copy-books, and, on the Sampsons' driving-shed roof pored over some many-thumbed "Rollo Dialogues," and, at last, flung the book into the rhubarb-bed, with the contemptuous verdict that Rollo was a "stiff," and that he was sick and tired of pottering round with fool books, anyway!

Whereupon the two restless spirits, full of their vernal disquiet, caught the Barrisons' cat and painted it a delicate pink with the remnants of the bottle of raspberry vinegar, left over from the sword combat. Then, picking on a suitably out-of-the-way and secret spot. Lonely and Lionel Clarence worked long and mysteriously at the river-bank with an old spade, well shadowed from the public view by a clump of dwarf-willow and wild grapevine. The result was a cave, with a smoke-vent