"Shut up, you--you Irish Biddy! 'Tisn't your beastly 'Fors.' It's one
of mine."

The book was a fat, brown-backed volume of the later Sixties, which
King had once thrown at Beetle's head that Beetle might see whence
the name Gigadibs came. Beetle had quietly annexed the book, and had
seen--several things. The quarter-comprehended verses lived and ate
with him, as the bedropped pages showed. He removed himself from all
that world, drifting at large with wondrous Men and Women, till
McTurk hammered the pilchard spoon on his head and he snarled.

"Beetle! You're oppressed and insulted and bullied by King. Don't you
feel it?"

"Let me alone! I can write some more poetry about him if I am, I
suppose."

"Mad! Quite mad!" said Stalky to the visitors, as one exhibiting
strange beasts. "Beetle reads an ass called Brownin', and McTurk
reads an ass called Ruskin; and--"

"Ruskin isn't an ass," said McTurk. "He's almost as good as the Opium
Eater. He says 'we're children of noble races trained by surrounding
art.' That means _me_, and the way I decorated the study when you two
badgers would have stuck up brackets and Christmas cards. Child of a
noble race, trained by surrounding art, stop reading, or I'll shove a
pilchard down your neck!"

"It's two to one," said Stalky, warningly, and Beetle closed the book,
in obedience to the law under which he and his companions had lived