“And now, what do you say to supper?” said Whymper, laying down the pipe at which he had been puffing with curious and rhythmic regularity.
In smoking, as in everything else, he was methodical, and had one counted the seconds that passed between each puff, the intervals would have been nearly identical.
Had I answered him truthfully I should have replied, “Say? What can I say except ‘Thank heaven!’ and that I’m starving?” instead of which I answered with apparent politeness but hidden irony:
“Thank you. When you’re quite ready.”
I regretted it the next moment, for, taking me too literally at my word, he resumed his pipe, relighted it, and pointing the stem at a photograph of himself upon the mantelshelf, remarked:
“I’m extraordinarily particular about small matters. Does anything strike you in that portrait?”
“It’s a very good likeness,” I sighed, with a strange sinking of the inner man, “and very characteristic, inasmuch as you are smoking, if I mistake not, that very pipe.”
He smiled cryptically.
“Does nothing else strike you? Look again!”
I groaned inwardly, but looked.