"Are you, in other words," explained Henry, "of intellectual or sporting tendencies?"
"Think," warned Bertie, "before you answer. Kipling, a great poet, author of sentiments that will stir mankind for all ages, sentiments that will ennoble, strengthen—"
"Do you know," confessed the widow with the gleeful naiveté of a child, "I like Kipling because he's so bad. He says such wicked things." She nodded and glanced audaciously from one youth to the other.
Henry reached wearily for his glass on the table beside him and Bertie Van Baalen sighed heavily. "You women! You make us bad. Don't you know you do? You want us bad, so we are—anything to please you beauteous creatures."
"I don't want you men bad, just poets," explained the widow, fanning herself slowly, cheerfully.
Henry waved the digression aside. "Now, tell us frankly, truthfully, black and blue, cross your heart, do you prefer a small, dyspeptic, overfed, snapping bundle of cotton wool which is, for the sake of euphemism, called a dog, to one of the greatest minds of the day?"
"Yes," said Bertie. "Suppose we sat here now, and you had the blessed angel, mother's pet, and one volume of Kipling complete, the only book of his in the world, and the only one there could ever be, the only book in which we could hand on to our children and our children's children such sublime thoughts, the only book, mind you, and if you had to throw one or the other overboard, a piece of sticking plaster or the greatest poet of modern times, which would it be?"
"If I threw my blessed pet over, would you go after him, Bertie?" demanded the widow, to whose mind a question of grave import had just presented itself. "Henry, would you? You know how I love my dainty little kitty kit, would you save him from cruel death for me? For my sake?"
"No harm," said Henry with feeling, "shall befall the angel child while I live to protect it—her—him."
"For your sake," said Bertie, "I would die."