Whiffers, eh? I'm afraid they're too far gone to repent. Rattray!
White! Perowne! Malpas! No answer. This is distressin'. This is
truly distressin'. Bring out your dead, you glandered lepers!"

"You think yourself funny, don't you?" said Rattray, stung from his
dignity by this last. "It's only a rat or something under the floor.
We're going to have it up to-morrow."

"Don't try to shuffle it off on a poor dumb animal, and dead, too. I
loathe prevarication. 'Pon my soul, Rattray--"

"Hold on. The Hartoffles never said 'Pon my soul' in all his little
life," said Beetle critically.

("Ah!" said Prout to little Hartopp.)

"Upon my word, sir, upon my word, sir, I expected better things of
you, Rattray. Why can you not own up to your misdeeds like a man?
Have _I_ ever shown any lack of confidence in _you_?"

("It's not brutality," murmured little Hartopp, as though answering a
question no one had asked. "It's boy; only boy.")

"And this was the house," Stalky changed from a pecking, fluttering
voice to tragic earnestness. "This was the--the--open cesspit that
dared to call us 'stinkers.' And now--and now, it tries to shelter
itself behind a dead rat. You annoy me, Rattray. You disgust me! You
irritate me unspeakably! Thank Heaven, I am a man of equable
temper--"