“A hell of a lot of difference it makes what I think! I know one God-forsaken flying chap who thought it wasn’t good enough for him, by a long shot. Not while he could hop off and rot his soul out in a water-logged bamboo shack in Asia!”
The owner of the bamboo shack settled deeper into his chair with a graceless and engaging grin.
“My dear chap, it was Heaven, pure and simple—but a dash too pure and simple for some of us. Every man his own Heaven, what? Well, you’re sitting in mine at the present. Of course it mightn’t suit any one with even an elementary code of principles, but having none of any kind or description it suits me down to the ground and up to the sky.”
“Oh, bunk!” commented Ledyard with fervent irritation. “You’ve got all the principles you need; do you think that I’d have come chasing up this unspeakable river in everything from a motorboat to a raft after any howling blackguard?”
“Well, it’s rather one on you, isn’t it, dear boy? Because it’s so absolutely what you’ve up and gone and done—though through no earthly fault of mine, you know! Rather not. Didn’t I spend four jolly busy years trying to get it through your thick skull that I was ninety-nine different varieties of blighter, and that nice little American kids with freckles on their noses shouldn’t come trotting around my propellers?”
“Hey, how do you get that way?” The nice little American kid raised his voice in poignant irritation. “Kid! If any one ever took the trouble to give you two looks they’d think you’d bounced straight out of rompers into long trousers without waiting for knickerbockers. Kid!”
“Old in iniquity, William, old in iniquity,” explained the Honourable Tony blithely. “Physically I grant that I’m fairly in the pink, but morally I’m edging rapidly into senile decay. I pledge you my word, which is worth considerably less than nothing, that I haven’t as many morals as I have side whiskers. And even you, my dear old chap, will be willing to admit that I don’t go in heavily for side whiskers. Take a long piercing look.”
Ledyard scowled wretchedly at the impish countenance blandly presented for inspection.
“The trouble with you is that you simply can’t take it in that any one on the whole bally globe could prefer a Bengal tiger to a British lion and a bird of paradise to an American eagle. You see before you a foul monstrosity who would trade all the British Isles for twenty yards of jungle, and gloat over his bargain. Have a cigarette?”
“No, I won’t have a cigarette. You make me so sick and tired with all that jaw about what a devil you are that I could yell. Once and for all, are you going to drop it and come back with me?”