"After all," she went on, "the drinks are in your department."
"Hock, perhaps," I said; "soapy water, no. There is a difference."
"Not very much," said Celia.
By the end of another week I was getting seriously alarmed. I began to fear that unless I watched it very carefully I should be improving myself too much.
"While the water was running out this morning," I said to Celia, as I started my breakfast just about lunch-time, "I got Paradise Lost off by heart, and made five hundred and ninety-six revolutions with the back paws. And then it was time to shave myself again. What a life for a busy man!"
"I don't know if you know that it's no——"
"Begin again," I said.
"—that it's no good waiting for the last inch or two to go out by itself. Because it won't. You have to—to hoosh it out."
"I do. And I sit on the taps looking like a full moon and try to draw it out. But it's no good. We had a neap tide to-day and I had to hoosh four inches. Jolly."
Celia gave a sigh of resignation.