“Sing-dance tomollow, then?” he said, with a condensed air of general disappointment. “Chop-chop in a pay look-see show on Ham—Hamstl—oh damme! on ‘Ampstead ‘Eath? Booked up, eh, John?”
Gradually convinced that it was becoming necessary to readjust the significance of the incident, I replied that I had no intention of partaking of chops or food of any variety in an erected tent, but merely of passing the night in an intellectual seclusion.
“Oh,” said the one who was walking by my side, regarding my garments with engaging attention, and at the same time appearing to regain an unruffled speech as though the other had been an assumed device, “I understand—the Blue Sky Hotel. Well, I’ve stayed there once or twice myself. A bit down on your uppers, eh?”
“Assuredly this person may perchance lay his upper parts down for a short space of time,” I admitted, when I had traced out the symbolism of the words. “As it is humanely written in The Books, ‘Sleep and suicide are the free refuges equally of the innocent and the guilty.’”
“Oh, come now, don’t,” exclaimed the energetic person, striking himself together by means of his two hands. “It’s sinful to talk about suicide the day before bank holiday. Why, my only Somali warrior has vamoosed with his full make-up, and the Magnetic Girl too, and I never thought of suicide—only whether to turn my old woman into a Veiled Beauty of the Harem or a Hairy Lama from Tibet.”
Not absolutely grasping the emergency, yet in a spirit of inoffensive cordiality I remarked that the alternative was insufferably perplexing, while he continued.
“Then I spotted you, and in a flash I got an idea that ought to take and turn out really great if you’ll come in. Now follow this: Missionary’s tent in the wilds of Pekin. Domestic interior by lamp-light. Missionary (me) reading evening paper; missionary’s wife (the missus) making tea, and between times singing to keep the small pet goat quiet (small goat, a pillow, horsecloth, and pocket-handkerchief). Breaks down singing, sobs, and says she feels a strange all-over presentiment. Missionary admits being a bit fluffed himself, and lets out about a notice signed in blood that he’s seen in the city.”
“Carried upon a pole?” this person demanded, feeling that something of a literary nature might yet be wrested into the incident.
“On a flagstaff if you like,” conceded the other one magnanimously. “A notice to the effect that it is the duty of every jack mother’s son of them to douse the foreign devils, man, woman, and child, and especially the talk-book pass-hat-round men. Also that he has had several brick-ends heaved at him on his way back. Then stops suddenly, hits his upper crust, and says that it’s like his blamed fat-headedness to frighten her; while she clutches at herself three times and faints away.”
“Amid the voluminous burning of blue lights?” suggested this person resourcefully.