“Well, yes.”
“I should have thought you had too much sense.”
“My dear fellow, you are here yourself,” returned Hammond.
The captain gave an impatient shrug.
“I know, but I shouldn’t be if I could help it. It’s a beastly bore. You can’t smoke, and you can’t drink, and you are expected to sit beside some sentimental woman of fifty and let her gush to you over some beastly novel you haven’t read, and wouldn’t understand if you had.”
Hammond shook his head with a reproving smile.
“Yes, but you should remember that we are not here to please ourselves. We are here to please society.”
“Why should you care about society? You’re not a damned pauper like me. You have everything you want.”
“No one on the face of the earth has everything he wants,” Hammond retorted. “But I see what it is; you are out of sorts. What’s the matter?”
Mauleverer’s only answer was a despairing shrug.