‘If you have any intention of remaining, you had better take out your pipe at once, Mr. Arbuthnot.’
‘Why?’
‘Because an idle man, his feet dangling over a ditch, and not smoking, would be a spectacle too wretched to contemplate.’
‘The description may be worse than the fact. I am idle. My feet dangle over a ditch. I am not smoking. I was never less wretched in my life.’
‘I spoke of such a person as an object of painful contemplation.’
‘Is the spectacle painful to you at this moment? Speak frankly.’
‘I—I only wished to let you know that you might smoke, if you chose.’
‘Thanks! I would rather do nothing to alter my present state of feeling.’
And then they came to a full stop: a rather marked one.