Читать книгу The Vagaries of Tod and Peter онлайн

11 страница из 79

Peter’s manner is singularly misleading in its frank sincerity, and he will on occasion answer a sudden question in a way which is, to say the least of it, bewildering to his interlocutor.

For instance, one day in the football-field a new master asked him the name of a small boy some distance off who was “slacking” abominably.

“Who’s that chap with the red hair by the goal posts?” he said to Peter, who had been somewhat officiously putting him right on several points.

“Dumpkins, sir,” that youth replied, demurely, and strolled off to a distant part of the playground.

“Dumpkins!” bawled the master. “Dumpkins, why aren’t you playing up?”

But Dumpkins heeded not the voice of authority and continued to loll and gaze heavenward in easy inactivity.

“Dumpkins! Dump-kins!” again he bellowed.

But Dumpkins only took an apple out of his pocket and began to eat it.

He is a hasty-tempered young man that master, and he strode toward the hapless Dumpkins and shook him angrily, exclaiming:

“Why don’t you answer when I call, you cheeky little beggar?”