"Ah, you may say that. If fog was fog, and nothing else, I'd put up with it. And why? Because we've got to."
"A true bill," said Constable Pond, assenting.
"But it brings something else along with it. That's what I complain of--and what I mostly complain of is shadders."
"What do you mean?" inquired Constable Pond.
"What I say. Shadders. I don't call myself a nervous man, but when you see something stealing along a yard or two ahead of you, and you go to lay hold of it and it vanishes--yes, Pond, vanishes--it's enough to give a man the creeps."
"It'd give me the creeps."
"Very well, then," said Constable Applebee, as though a matter which had been in dispute was now settled. "Put a substantial body in my way and I'll tackle it. But how can you tackle it when it melts and disappears? You call out, 'Now, then, what are you up to?' and you don't get a whisper in reply. Ain't that enough to aggravate a man?"
"More than enough; I know how I should feel over it. But look here, Applebee, it ain't imagination, is it?"
"Imagination!" exclaimed Constable Applebee, in a voice of scorn. "What! Me! Why, I don't suppose, from the day I was born to this blessed night of white fog, that if it was all reckoned up I've had imagination enough to fill a two-ounce bottle."
This new view of the quality of imagination in relation to quantity seemed to impress Constable Pond, who turned it over in his mind without feeling himself equal to offer an opinion on it.