“Am I? Oh, it’s nothing. Some active service will soon send that away.”
“Active service?”
“Yes. I’m going to volunteer.”
“Haven’t you had enough of that yet?”
“I haven’t had any. My active service up till now has been strictly confined to running away, and uncommonly ‘active’ service it has been, let me assure you.”
“Running away?” she repeated. “Yes; it is the sort of running away that one has a particular admiration for. Running away on foot, for instance, with about a thousand savages a hundred yards behind, so that a wounded comrade may ride away on one’s horse.”
He flushed. That wretched Shackleton had been firing off that stale yarn here too. Of course, it would look as though he himself had inspired it.
“Don’t look annoyed,” said Nidia, softly; “because I haven’t half done. ‘Running away,’ too, in order to take care of a certain helpless fugitive belonging to the helpless sex, who would otherwise certainly have been murdered, or certainly have come to some miserable end a dozen times over, is another kind of flight which appeals.”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake leave that part of it! It was no thanks to me and my blundering asinine stupidity that you came in safe at all.”
“No. But, you see, I happen to hold a different opinion. And now, John, I have a little sore grievance against you, and I want to work it off. We don’t see much of you now. Why not?”