“But you put in a lot of work over them,” he said at length. “Often when I’m going up to bed, I see the light still burning in your sitting-room window.”
“And if it comes to that,” rejoined the Major, “I’m sure I’ve often dozed off when I’m in bed and woken again, and pulled up my blind, and what not, and there’s your light still burning. Powerful long roads those old Romans must have made, Captain.”
The ice was not broken, but it was cracking in all directions under this unexampled thaw. The two had clearly indicated a mutual suspicion of each other’s industrious habits after dinner… They had never got quite so far as this before: some quarrel had congealed the surface again. But now, with a desperate disagreement just behind them, and the unusual luxury of a taxi just in front, the vernal airs continued blowing in the most springlike manner.
“Yes, that’s true enough,” said Puffin. “Long roads they were, and dry roads at that, and if I stuck to them from after my supper every evening till midnight or more, should be smothered in dust.”
“Unless you washed the dust down just once in a while,” said Major Flint.
“Just so. Brain-work’s an exhausting process; requires a little stimulant now and again,” said Puffin. “I sit in my chair, you understand, and perhaps doze for a bit after my supper, and then I’ll get my maps out, and have them handy beside me. And then, if there’s something interesting the evening paper, perhaps I’ll have a look at it, and bless me, if by that time it isn’t already half-past ten or eleven, and it seems useless to tackle archæology then. And I just—just while away the time till I’m sleepy. But there seems to be a sort of legend among the ladies here, that I’m a great student of local topography and Roman roads, and all sorts of truck, and I find it better to leave it at that. Tiresome to go into long explanations. In fact,” added Puffin in a burst of confidence, “the study I’ve done on Roman roads these last six months wouldn’t cover a threepenny piece.”
Major Flint gave a loud, choking guffaw and beat his fat leg.
“Well, if that’s not the best joke I’ve heard for many a long day,” he said. “There I’ve been in the house opposite you these last two years, seeing your light burning late night after night, and thinking to myself, ‘There’s my friend Puffin still at it! Fine thing to be an enthusiastic archæologist like that. That makes short work of a lonely evening for him if he’s so buried in his books or his maps—Mapps, ha! ha!—that he doesn’t seem to notice whether it’s twelve o’clock or one or two, maybe!’ And all the time you’ve been sitting snoozing and boozing in your chair, with your glass handy to wash the dust down.”
Puffin added his falsetto cackle to this merriment.
“And, often I’ve thought to myself,” he said, “‘There’s my friend the Major in his study opposite, with all his diaries round him, making a note here, and copying an extract there, and conferring with the Viceroy one day, and reprimanding the Maharajah of Bom-be-boo another. He’s spending the evening on India’s coral strand, he is, having tiffin and shooting tigers and Gawd knows what—’”