"But you weren't driving a tandem with a restive leader."
"And oughtn't she to apologize for driving restive horses? Must I dodge for my life—or for hers—without even a civil word or look—just an order from a flunkey?"
"For some reason or another," I observed, "people who are angry always call grooms and footmen flunkeys."
He burst into a guffaw of laughter. "Lord, yes, asses all of us, to be sure! And what, after all, does a flick in the face come to, Mr. Philosopher? Nothing at all! It hardly even hurts. But a man calls it a deadly insult—when he's angry; between man and man there must be blood for it when they're angry."
"There's the police court," I suggested mildly.
"As you say, for sheep there's the police court. I came as near behaving right as one can with a woman when I broke her whip."
"You really think that?"
"Yes, Austin, I really do—and that shows, as you were going to say, that I'm utterly hopeless. I don't fit the standards." He was sitting hunched up over the fire, monopolizing its heat, his great shoulders nearly up to his ears. He condemned himself with much better humor than he judged other people. "I don't fit them, I don't agree with them, I hate them. Left to myself, I'd get out of this."
"Who's stopping you?" I asked, pulling at my pipe and trying to edge nearer the fire.
He took no notice of my question—which was indeed no more than an indifferently civil way of suggesting that he was at liberty to please himself. He took no notice of my futile edging either.