Jock acted and roared with such effect as to be encored, but Rob objected.  “He ain’t got any apprentices.”

“It might be altered,” said Allen.

       “Old man, old man, thy gates thou must ope,”

Bobus chimed in.

       “Nor force Eton swells in quagmire to grope.”

“Bother you, don’t humbug and put me out.

       “Old man, old man, if for aught thou wouldst hope,
        Thy heart, purse, and gates thou must instantly ope. 
        Let me but-—”

“Get Mother Carey to write it,” suggested his cousin John.

“No; she must know nothing about it,” said Bobus.

“She’d think it a jolly lark,” said Jock.

“When it’s over,” said Allen.  “But it’s one of the things that the old ones are sure to stick at beforehand, if they are ever so rational and jolly.”

“’Tis a horrid pity she is not a fellow,” sighed Johnny.

“And who’ll do the verses?” said Rob.

“Oh, any fool can do them,” returned Bobus.  “The point is to bell the cat.”

“There’d be no getting in to act the midnight ghost,” said Allen.

“No,” said Jock; “but one could hide in the big rhododendron in the wolf-skin rug, and jump out on him in his chair.”

In Allen’s railway rug, Jock rehearsed the scene, and was imitated if not surpassed by both cousins; but Allen and Bobus declared that it could not be carried out in the daylight.

“I could do it still better,” said Jock, “if I blacked myself all over, not only my face, but all the rest, and put on nothing but my red flannel drawers and a turban.  They’d take me for the ghost of the little nigger he flogged to death, and Allen could write something pathetic and stunning.”

“You might cut human ears out of rabbit-skins and hang them round your neck,” added Bobus.

“You’d be awfully cold,” said Allen.

“You could mix in a little iodine,” suggested Bobus.  “That stings like fun, and a coppery tinge would be more natural.”

There was great acclamation, but the difficulty was that the only time for effecting an entrance into the garden was between four and five in the morning, and it would be needful to lurk there in this light costume till Mr. Barnes went out.  No one would be at liberty from school but Allen, and he declined the oil and lamp-black even though warmed up with iodine.

“Could it not be done by deputy?” said Bobus; “we might blacken the little fat boy riding on a swan, the statue, I mean.”

“What, and gild the swan, to show how far his golden goose can carry him?” said Jock.

“Or,” said Allen, “there’s the statue they say is himself, though that’s all nonsense.  We could make a pair of donkey’s ears in Mother Carey’s clay, and clap them on him, and gild the thing in his hand.”

“What would be the good of that?” asked Robert.