“I am comfortable enough for the present, thank you. Heaven knows how long it will last!”
Sogrange waved his arms towards the great uneasy plain of blue sea, the showers of foam leaping into the sunlight, away beyond the disappearing coast of France.
“Last!” he repeated. “For eight days, I hope. Consider, my dear Baron! What could be more refreshing, more stimulating to our jaded nerves than this? Think of the December fogs you have left behind, the cold, driving rain, the puddles in the street, the gray skies—London, in short, at her ugliest and worst.”
“That is all very well,” Peter protested, “but I have left several other things behind, too.”
“As, for instance?” Sogrange inquired, genially.
“My wife,” Peter informed him. “Violet objects very much to these abrupt separations. This week, too, I was shooting at Saxthorpe, and I had also several other engagements of a pleasant nature. Besides, I have reached that age when I find it disconcerting to be called out of bed in the middle of the night to answer a long distance telephone call, and told to embark on a White Star liner leaving Liverpool early the next morning. It may be your idea of a pleasure trip. It isn’t mine.”
Sogrange was amused. His smile, however, was hidden. Only the tip of his cigarette was visible.
“Anything else?”
“Nothing much, except that I am always seasick,” Peter replied deliberately. “I can feel it coming on now. I wish that fellow would keep away with his beastly mutton broth. The whole ship seems to smell of it.”
Sogrange laughed, softly but without disguise.