His face was red, his eyes full of dancing water.
Yet he managed to articulate.
"I say, you know, you'll bring the old man down." Then he went off again into spasms.
"Hu! Hu!" whooped Jim, subsiding.

"Hu!" He rolled over on to his back, and lay silent.

The others also became weakly silent.
"What's amiss ?" said Aaron Sisson, breaking this spell.
They all began to laugh again, except Jim, who lay on his back looking up at the strange sky.
"What're you laughing at ?" repeated Aaron.
"We're laughing at the man on the ground," replied Josephine.

"I think he's drunk a little too much." "Ay," said Aaron, standing mute and obstinate.
"Did you want anything ?" Robert enquired once more.
"Eh ?" Aaron looked up.

"Me?
No, not me." A sort of inertia kept him rooted.