“Well, we’ll come, too,” said Stalky, with a general’s suspicion of his aides. “Don’t want you.” “Oh, leave him alone. He’s been taken worse with a poem,” said McTurk. “He’ll go burbling down to the Pebbleridge and spit it all up in the study when he comes back.” “Then why did he want the tuppence, Turkey? He’s gettin’ too beastly independent. Hi! There’s a bunny. No, it ain’t. It’s a cat, by Jove! You plug first.” Twenty minutes later a boy with a straw hat at the back of his head, and his hands in his pockets, was staring at workmen as they moved about a half-finished cottage. He produced some ferocious tobacco, and was passed from the forecourt into the interior, where he asked many questions. “Well, let’s have your beastly epic,” said Turkey, as they burst into the study, to find Beetle deep in Viollet-le-Duc and some drawings. “We’ve had no end of a lark.” “Epic? What epic? I’ve been down to the coastguard.” “No epic? Then we will slay you, O Beetle,” said Stalky, moving to the attack. “You’ve got something up your sleeve. _I_ know, when you talk in that tone!” “Your Uncle Beetle”--with an attempt to imitate Stalky’s war-voice--“is a great man.” “Oh, no; he jolly well isn’t anything of the kind. You deceive yourself, Beetle. Scrag him, Turkey!” “A great man,” Beetle gurgled from the floor. “_You_ are futile--look out for my tie!--futile burblers. I am the Great Man. I gloat. Ouch! Hear me!” “Beetle, de-ah”--Stalky dropped unreservedly on Beetle’s chest--“we love you, an’ you’re a poet. If I ever said you were a doggaroo, I apologize; but you know as well as we do that you can’t do anything by yourself without mucking it.” “I’ve got a notion.” “And you’ll spoil the whole show if you don’t tell your Uncle Stalky. Cough it up, ducky, and we’ll see what we can do. Notion, you fat impostor--I knew you had a notion when you went away! Turkey said it was a poem.” “I’ve found out how houses are built. Le’ me get up. The floor-joists of one room are the ceiling-joists of the room below.” “Don’t be so filthy technical.” “Well, the man told me. The floor is laid on top of those joists--those boards on edge that we crawled over--but the floor stops at a partition. Well, if you get behind a partition, same as you did in the attic, don’t you see that you can shove anything you please under the floor between the floor-boards and the lath and plaster of the ceiling below? Look here. I’ve drawn it.” He produced a rude sketch, sufficient to enlighten the allies. There is no part of the modern school curriculum that deals with architecture, and none of them had yet reflected whether floors and ceilings were hollow or solid. Outside his own immediate interests the boy is as ignorant as the savage he so admires; but he has also the savage’s resource. “I see,” said Stalky. “I shoved my hand there. An’ then?”