My mother will not like my having let you hear
Hanky's sermon and declare yourself."
"You half told me not to say who I was."
"Yes, but I was delighted when you disobeyed me."
"I did it very badly. I never rise to great occasions, I always fall to
them, but these things must come as they come."
"You did it as well as it could be done, and good will come of it."
"And now," he continued, "describe exactly all that passed between you
and the Professors. On which side of Panky did Hanky sit, and did they
sit north and south or east and west? How did you get--oh yes, I know
that--you told them it would be of no further use to them. Tell me all
else you can."
My father said that the Professors were sitting pretty well east and
west, so that Hanky, who was on the east side, nearest the mountains, had
Panky, who was on the Sunch'ston side, on his right hand. George made a
note of this. My father then told what the reader already knows, but
when he came to the measurement of the boots, George said, "Take your
boots off," and began taking off his own. "Foot for foot," said he, "we
are not father and son, but brothers. Yours will fit me; they are less
worn than mine, but I daresay you will not mind that."
On this George _ex abundanti cautela_ knocked a nail out of the right
boot that he had been wearing and changed boots with my father; but he
thought it more plausible not to knock out exactly the same nail that was
missing on my father's boot.
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