“Yes, it’s a bore,” pronounced Raynier, pushing the bell, to order “pegs.” “And the worst of it is I’ve got to go down to the country this afternoon—to an eminently respectable vicarage, too.”
“Remedy’s easy. Don’t go.”
“That’s no remedy at all. I must.”
“Stick a patch over the eye, then.”
“But he can’t stick a patch over his head as well,” said the other.
“You two chaps have come off with hardly a scratch,” said Raynier—“and yet you were just as much in the thick of it as I was.”
“So we were. But I say, Raynier, I believe it’s a judgment on a staid old buffer like you for ‘mafeking’ around with a lot of lively sparks like us. Ha—ha—that wasn’t bad, I say, don’t-cher-know. ‘Mafeking!’ See it? Ah—ha—ha!”
“Oh, go away. It’s an outrage. At how many people’s hands have you courted destruction by firing that on them this morning?”
“Not many. But it’s awfully good, eh, old sportsman? Why I invented it.”
“Then you deserve death,” returned Raynier. “Oh, Grice, take him away, and drown him, will you; but stay—let him have his ‘peg’ first—since here it comes.”