"Why, there'd have been no fun in doing that!" said Mr. Wriford. "Fun!" exclaimed the rector. "No, no fun perhaps. But a hearty welcome I--" "Oh, keep your hearty welcomes to yourself!" cried Mr. Wriford. And then the chairman: "You're a confirmed rascal, sir. A confirmed and stubborn rascal. When our good vicar--" "Well, you're a self-important, over-fed, and very gross-looking pomposity," returned Mr. Wriford. "Seven days," said the chairman, very swollen. "Take them away, constable." "Curse me," said Mr. Puddlebox when, accommodated for the night in adjoining cells, they conversed over the partition that divided them. "Curse me, you're no better than a fool, loony, and I challenge any man to be a bigger. Here we are at these vile tasks for a week and would have got away scot free and a shilling from the parson but for your fool's tongue." "Well, I had to say something to stir them up," explained Mr. Wriford. "I must be doing something all the time, or I get-- "Well, there's better things to do than this cursed foolishness," grumbled Mr. Puddlebox. "It's new to me," said Mr. Wriford. "That's what I want." That indeed was what he wanted in these months and ever sought with sudden bursts of fierceness or of irresponsible prankishness. He must be doing something all the time and doing something that brought reprisals, either in form of fatigue that followed hard work in their odd jobs--digging, carting stable refuse, hoeing a long patch of root crops, harvesting which gave the pair steady employment and left them at the turn of the year with a stock of shillings in hand, roadside work where labour had fallen short and a builder was behindhand with a contract for some cottages--or in form of punishment such as followed his truculence before the magistrate or was got by escapades of the nature of their early adventures. Something that brought reprisals, something to be felt in his body. "Why, you don't understand, you see," Mr. Wriford would cry, responsive to remonstrance from Mr. Puddlebox. "All my life I've felt things here--here in my head," and he would strike his head hard and begin to speak loudly and very fiercely and quickly, so that often his words rolled themselves together or were several times repeated. "In my head, head, head--all mixed up and whirling there so I felt I must scream to let it all out: scream out senseless words and loud roars like uggranddlearrrrohohohgarragarragaddaurrr! Now my head's empty, empty, empty, and I can smash at it as if it didn't belong to me. Look here!" "Ah, stop it, boy, stop it!" Mr. Puddlebox would cry, and catch at Mr. Wriford's fist that banged in illustration.