`Lots in the corner,' Sefton replied. `Hurry up! Stop blubbin', you brute, Beetle. We're goin' to have a giddy campaign. Losers have to sing for the winners--sing odes in honour of the conqueror. You call yourself a beastly poet, don't you, Beetle? I'll poet you.' He wriggled into position by Campbell's side.
Swiftly and scientifically the stumps were thrust through the natural crooks, and the wrists tied with well stretched box-ropes to an accompaniment of insults from M`Turk, bound, betrayed, and voluble behind the chair.
Stalky set away Campbell and Sefton, and strode over to his allies, locking the door on the way.
`And that's all right,' said he in a changed voice.
`What the devil--?' Sefton began. Beetle's false tears had ceased; M`Turk, smiling, was on his feet. Together they bound the knees and ankles of the enemy even more straitly.
Stalky took the arm-chair and contemplated the scene with his blandest smile. The man trussed for cock-fighting is, perhaps, the most helpless thing in the world.
`The bleatin' of the kid excites the tiger. Oh, you frabjous asses!' He lay back and laughed till he could no more. The victims took in the situation but slowly.
`We'll give you the finest lickin' you ever had in your young lives when we get up!' thundered Sefton from the floor. `You'll laugh the other side of your mouth before you've done. What the deuce d'you mean by this?'
`You'll see in two shakes,' said M`Turk. `Don't swear like that. What we want to know is, why you two hulkin' swine have been bullyin' Clewer?'
`It's none of your business.'
`What did you bully Clewer for?' The question was repeated with maddening iteration by each in turn. They knew their work.
`Because we jolly well chose,' was the answer at last. `Let's get up.' Even then they could not realise the game.
`Well, now we're goin' to bully you because we jolly well choose. We're goin' to be just as fair to you as you were to Clewer. He couldn't do anything against you. You can't do anything to us. Odd, ain't it?'
`Can't we? You wait an' see.'
`Ah,' said Bettle reflectively, `that shows you've never been properly jested with. A public lickin' ain't in it with a gentle jape. Bet a bob you'll weep an' promise anything.'
`Look here, young Bettle, we'll half kill you when we get up. I'll promise you that, at any rate.'
`You're going to be half killed first, though. Did you give Clewer Head-knuckles?'
`Did you give Clewer Head-knuckles?' M`Turk echoed. At the twentieth repetition--no boy can stand the torture of one unvarying query, which is the essence of bullying--came confession.
`We did, confound you!'
`Then you'll be knuckled'; and knuckled they were, according to ancient experience. Head-knuckling is no trifle; `Molly' Fairburn of the old days could not have done better.
`Did you give Clewer Brush-drill?'