I think, then, with all deference to destiny, that we will.
“I have sometimes wondered,” I remark to Mrs. Ulswater, “just what our idea was in kidnapping Ram Nad—if it was quite accidental, or if we were not, on that occasion—shall we say?—in collusion with accident.”
“Why”—Mrs. Ulswater returns to her sewing—“of course! I thought he wanted to steal Susannah. He wasn't a bit good at pretending. Goodness, no! But I didn't know how he was going to do it, so I asked Captain Jansen to stay awake below. But it would have been dreadful if Ram Nad had drowned. I just let him try, because, of course, I thought, after behaving so, he couldn't say much if we carried him off.”
“But why, at that time, did we want to carry him off?”
“It was the pictures in the big Bible,” Mrs. Ulswater replies. “All the old men there look like him. I thought it would be nice to have him.”
Such is our situation. Here I float on Elysian seas. (My next article, on the Scaphopodae, will astonish the scientific world. My collection of Cephalopterae is now unique. I have proved three mistakes in Schmidt's classification of the Coelenterates.)
Ulswater.
P. S.—Ram Nad begs to remain with us. He is inwardly composed of guile and gammon. Still, like Susannah, he is in a way a personage.
But suppose Mrs. Ulswater learns Oriental mesmerism of Ram Nad, and supplements—quite unnecessarily—by this means, her government of me. I should protest: “No, Mrs. Ulswater! Not while I know myself master of this household!”
P. P. S.—Suppose she insists!