Mr. Wriford sat up. He pressed a hand to his head and presently, his chest heaving, spoke with sobbing breaths. "You might have helped me," he sobbed. "You might have helped me."
From above his dripping nose, Mr. Puddlebox regarded him dolorously. He had no speech.
"You might have helped me," Mr. Wriford moaned.
"Glug," said Mr. Puddlebox thickly. "Glug. Blink!"
"When you saw me—" Mr. Wriford cried.
"Glug," said Mr. Puddlebox. "Blink! Helped you!" he then cried. "Why, look what the devil I have helped you! Glug. If I have bled a pint, I have bled a quart, and at this flood I shall ungallon myself to death. Glug. Blink. Why, I was no less than a fool ever to come near you. Might have helped you! Glug!"
Mr. Wriford's common politeness came to him. With some apology in his tone, "I don't know how you got that," he said. "I only—"
Mr. Puddlebox, very woefully from behind a blood-red cloth: "I don't know how I shall ever get over it." But he was by now a little better of it, the flow somewhat staunched, and he said with a vexation that he justified by glances at the soaking cloth between dabs of it at his nose: "Why, I helped you in all I could. You fought like four devils. I was in the very heart of it.
"I heard you," said Mr. Wriford, "shouting 'Glumph him!' or some such word. It was no help to—"
Mr. Puddlebox returned crossly. "Glumph him! Certainly I—glug. Blink! There it is off again. Glug. Certainly I shouted glumph him. A glumph is a fat hit—a hit without art or science, and the only sort of which I am capable, or you, either, as I saw at a glance. Glug."