“Oysters on the pier, I remember. That was at Easter, wasn’t it? You and I went together, and waited at the stage-door. And she was with another chap. Wonder who he was. Wonder....”
“What do you wonder?”
“Oh, nothing. It was only a rag. But I suppose girls cease to be a rag some time. People go and marry them and live with them happily ever afterwards. I should be awfully uncomfortable if I thought I was going to live with one girl for ever. Buxom: they get buxom. There’s that Jackson girl: she’s buxom already. Lord!”
“That Jackson girl,” said Jim, “told Badders you had the most beautiful mouth she ever saw. Didn’t I tell you?”
“No. She wants to kiss me, and I don’t want to kiss her: that’s where we are. She’s like a fat ferret, though most of them are lean. Marrying now! I don’t want to marry anybody. I shouldn’t sleep a wink with somebody snorting and breathing all night long. And if you have a separate room they divorce you, don’t they?”
“Usually.”
“Well, the sooner I’m divorced the better,” said Robin.
“You’ve got to marry first.”
Robin took a long draught from his whisky and soda.
“I should like to be divorced first,” he said, “and marry afterwards. And yet some fellows think about nothing but girls the whole blessed day. Badders does. Pure waste of time. Give me a girl for ten minutes, and then let me come back to my own little room. There’s a time for everything under the sun, and, thank God, it’s not time to marry yet!”