"Gimme me my biscuits and things, and let's be going," whined Peter, ungrammatically and fearfully.
"The fat-producing provender, scoundrel, with which thou camest boastfully back to school, is easy enough of access to one of thy elegant figure and nimbleness of foot. If thou so delightest in eating, thou wilt gladly climb for thy food. Thou wilt find it dangling from the topmost bough of yonder sycamore tree, whither the Forest nymphs, disgusted by thy swinish greed, spirited it."
Peter gave a scream of baffled rage as, looking up, he saw that his basket of eatables had actually been tied high up in the sycamore tree. Stout as he was, sluggish with over-feeding during the Christmas holidays, the task of climbing that high tree, slippery with hoar-frost, was quite beyond him. Stung to reckless fury by his impotence, he first of all showed Robin his teeth in an ugly snarl. Then he set up such a hullabaloo of weeping as might have been heard a mile away.
"Uh, bu-bu-bu-bub-bub-oo!" he blubbered. "You know I can't reach it up there, you cads. I'm not strong. (Oh, bub-bub-oo!) My father's doctor says I haven't to c-c-climb trees. I've to have plenty of rich and sustaining f-f-food, and I'm hungry now. Gimme my biscuits, bub-bub-bub-oo!"
"Bub-bub-bub-oo!" the Merry Men mocked him, by common consent. "Gimme my biscuits, bub-bub-bub--ooo!"
What cursed spite was it that turned Dick Forge's footsteps in the direction of the Shrubbery just then? Every good reason was his to be conveniently deaf on that side to-day. No kudos could be derived from stopping yet another of the constantly recurring demonstrations of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. They were his only friends in the school just now, and as such were surely entitled to as much rope as he could discreetly allow them. Yet here he was, urged on to an unpopular action by that stern inner monitor which we know by the name of Duty.
"Now then, you chaps, what's this Bedlam about?" he demanded. "Playing at wild beasts escaping from a menagerie, eh? There's a howling wolf amongst you, at any rate. Why," he exclaimed, as the cordon of Merry Men parted to admit him, "it's young Mawdster again!"
Peter ceased blubbering as suddenly as he began. "Yes, Forge, it's me," he said. "They've slung all my grub up there in the sycamore tree. Make 'em fetch it down for me!"