“Not many nurse-maids in the Kyber Pass,” his son observed.
“Frontiers — yes, I dare say,” snorted Sir Peter. “A few black rag dolls behind trees popping at you to keep your circulation going, and you with Maxims and all, going picnics in the hills and burning down villages as easy as pulling fire-crackers — and half the time you want help from us! Look at South Africa!”
They looked at South Africa for some time till the dessert came and the Plymouth Brother thankfully withdrew. After that Winn allowed himself some margin and Lady Staines leaned back in her chair, ate grapes and enjoyed her coffee.
The conversation became pungent, savage and enlivened on Sir Peter’s part by strange oaths.
Winn kept to sudden thrusts of irony impossible to foresee and difficult to parry.
They drank velvety ripe old port. Sir Peter was for the moment out of pain and anxious to assert his freedom from doctors. The conversation shifted to submarines. Sir Peter thought them an underhand and decadent development suited to James, who was in command of one of them.
As to aëroplanes he said that as we’d now succeeded in imitating infernal birds and fishes — he supposed we’d soon bring off reptiles the kind of creature the modern young would be likely to represent best.
“We shall soon have the police crawling on their bellies up and down the Strand hiding behind lamp-posts,” finished Sir Peter. “Call that kind of thing science! It’s an inverted Noah’s Ark! That’s what it is! And when you get it all going to suit yourself, there’ll be another flood, and serve you all damned well right. I shall enjoy seeing you drown!”
Winn replied that you had to fight with your head now and that people who fought with their fists were about as dangerous as stuffed rabbits.
Sir Peter replied that in the end everything came down to blood, how much you’d got yourself and how much you could get out of the enemy.