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I said, puffing at my pipe. Mr. Selwyn made no reply. "I hear that the crops are looking particularly healthy this year," I went on. Mr. Selwyn appeared to be utterly lost in the contemplation of an adjacent tree. "To my mind an old apple tree is singularly picturesque," I began again, "nice nobbly branches, don't you know." Mr. Selwyn began to fidget.
She had pulled off her hat as soon as she returned, and had flung herself into the big dining-room chair. "I do nothing but steal umbrellas. I am so very sorry! Do come in and choose one. Is yours a hooky or a nobbly? Mine's a nobbly at least, I THINK it is."
Wonderingly, Barnabas handed him the article in question, whereupon Mr. Shrig, setting it upon the end of the nobbly stick, began to advance swiftly where the shadow lay blackest, and with an added caution, motioning to Barnabas to do the like. They were close upon the River now, so close that Barnabas could hear it lapping against the piles, and catch the indefinable reek of it.
After leaving the flats near Geelong, the track went up and down. Grey-green forest surrounded them, out of which nobbly hills rose like islands from a sea of trees. As they approached the end of their journey, they overtook a large number of heavy vehicles labouring along through the mire. A coach with six horses dashed past them at full gallop, and left them rapidly behind.
Half-way down the passage Mr. Shrig halted abruptly and turned, as the first of their pursuers appeared. "This'll do!" he panted, swinging the nobbly stick in his hand, "can't come on more nor two at vunce. Be ready vith your stick at their eyes poke at 'em no 'itting " the rest was drowned in the echoing rush of heavy feet and the boom of hoarse voices.
Then Barnabas rose, and coming to the window, peered cautiously out, and there, standing before the barn surveying its dilapidation with round, approving eyes, his nobbly stick beneath his arm, his high-crowned, broad-brimmed hat upon his head, was Mr. Shrig. Surprise and something very like disappointment were in Mr. Shrig's look as Barnabas stepped out from the yawning doorway of the barn.
The question was well received by the audience. Tom was beaten. A potato, vast and nobbly, fell from his palsied hand. He was speechless. Then he began to stammer. "Just you stop it, Tom," shouted Kit triumphantly. "Just you stop it, d'you 'ear, you stop it." She turned towards us on the steps, and, taking us all into her confidence, added: "'E's a nice thing to 'ave for a bruvver, anyway."
Once more the echoing passage roared with the din of conflict, as their assailants rushed again, were checked, smote and were smitten, and fell back howling before the thrust of the nobbly stick and the swing of the heavy bludgeon. "Now vill ye run?" panted Mr. Shrig, straightening the broad-brimmed hat. "No!" "V'y then, I vill!" which Mr. Shrig immediately proceeded to do.
And he knew nothing of the spell which Oh-I-Am had placed by his door. The Lumpy Mattress Now he got into bed, and thought he would go to sleep; but, oh, how hard the mattress was! Wry-Face lay this way, then that, but no matter what way he lay, he found a great lump just beneath him which was as hard as hard, and as nobbly as could be.
"V'y then, sir, I think ve may wenture," said he, and rising, put on his hat, examined the priming of the brass-bound pistol, and taking the nobbly stick under his arm, blew out the candle and crossed to the door; yet, being there, paused. "Sir," said he, a note of anxiety in his voice, "you promise to do eggs-actly vot I say?" "I promise!" "Ven I say 'run' you'll run?" "Yes."
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