"Blue or brazen," said Hal carelessly, "it was a lot of infernal rot."
"My dear old feller," said Tuppy huffishly, "eminent strategist an' military authority as you are, incisive analyst of character as you may be; rampin' rhetorician an' high steppin' logician as in all probability you imagine yourself to be, I cannot accept your dictum on literary quality or diction. I thought that vulture touch was exceptionally imaginative, and the introduction of the blue sky supremely delicate."
"Anybody would think that you had written that bit yourself," chaffed Hal. Tuppy was not to be appeased.
"That's beside the question," he complained.
Then Alicia interrupted them.
She monopolized Tuppy, and Hal, after a vain attempt to join in the conversation, withdrew a little sulkily.
"Lord Tupping," she asked, "aren't you feeling a terrible hypocrite?"
"Not unusually so, dear lady," said Tuppy.
"Sir Harry thinks that you are not on speaking terms with the Duke."
Tuppy coughed.