Part 23 (2/2)
”One of them is under me and hurting me terribly. Move, please.”
Between the peals of laughter: ”I can't move, Mr. Purdie. I'm practically standing on my head, you know.”
”I don't know anything about it. My face is almost in something highly unpleasant--a dead bird, I think. Please stop that laughter and try to do something. The odour here is most noisome.”
”Well, but I can't stop laughing. Did you see us shoot?”
”Please try to control yourself. I did not see us shoot.”
A mighty effort causes Percival's head and shoulders to come up with a jerk; Mr. Purdie feels the weight of pupil and tricycle removed from his back, and there follows another crash and further yells of laughter.
In m.u.f.fled agony from the hedge: ”Now what has happened?”
”Well, I'm bothered if I haven't fallen again! I've fallen out, though.”
Out of the depths: ”Percival! Percival! Don't be such a silly little boy! Pull me out!”
”Well, I'm all mixed up in this awful trike, you know. Now, I'm up!”
”Pray pull me, then. I am retching with this noisome smell.”
”Well, there's nothing to pull!” cries Percival, plunging round the tremendous stern that sticks out of the hedge. ”Your trousers are simply _tight_!”
Out of the depths: ”Tch! Tch! Push me sideways, then.”
The mammoth stern is pushed sideways and hauled backways, and presently begins to rise, and presently the stout tutor is ponderously disgorged from the hedge, and staggers forth with grunts and moans, and collapses on the roadside, feet in ditch, very bedraggled and unfortunate looking.
”Don't think I'm laughing at you,” Percival says. ”I'm really very sorry for you. But you're not hurt, you know. Let me rub you down with leaves.”
”I am terribly shaken. Do not touch me for a few minutes, please.”
”Is the fly still in your eye?”
”I don't know where the fly is.”
”Your trousers are awfully torn.”
”Be silent, please. I am dazed.”
He remains dazed when at last they begin to trudge home, the wrecked tricycle left for a cart. But at the top of the hill that plunged them to disaster, the infectious spurts of laughter at his side challenge his self-esteem and he sets out to sound his reputation in Percival's regard.
”I think I steered rather well, considering I couldn't see.”
Percival is always generous: ”Splendidly! Oh, dear, I'm aching with laughing!”
”I was only afraid for you, Percival.”
”We whizzed, you know! We simply whizzed!”
Mr. Purdie glances back down the hill and shudders to have whizzed it.
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