“No. Are you?”

“Yes. Hang it!” Then he looked at me with a puzzled air and continued:

“I say, though, Sam, it’s awfully funny you shouldn’t have—don’t you know what it’s like, then?”

“How should I?” I inquired apologetically. “What is it like, George?”

George took my arm.

“It’s just Hades,” he informed me confidentially.

“Then,” I remarked, “I have no reason to regret—?”

“Still, you know,” interrupted George, “it’s not half bad.”

“That appears to me to be a paradox,” I observed.

“It’s precious hard to explain it to you if you’ve never felt it,” said George, in rather an injured tone. “But what I say is quite true.”