"A veteran—even a Spanish War Veteran—has to do something to individualize himself," I jested; and then Grey took his turn at me.
"You are a veteran yourself, Richard—of a sort. They tell me you have been knocking around here in the tropics so long that you've forgotten all the little decent and civilized ameliorations. Why don't you marry and settle down?"
I laughed.
"Go up yonder on the bridge and ask Annette why some men marry and some don't; she'll tell you," I said; and he promptly took me at my word, at least so far as leaving me was concerned.
A short time after this, just after I had identified the two smokers in the wicker lounging chairs under the afterdeck awning as Ingerson and Madeleine Barclay's father, the last truck-load of trunks came. While the baggage was going into the Andromeda's forehold, Dupuyster, looking more English than any Briton to the manner born, came lounging aft and greeted me chirpingly.
"'Lo, old chappie; dashed glad to know you're comin' along, what? Bonty was just tellin' me he'd scragged you for the voyage. Topping, I'll say."
"Topping, if you say so, Jerry. How long have you been over?"
"Eh, what?—how long have I been over? I say, old dear—that's a jolly good one, y' know. But tell me; where is this bally old tub of Bonty's goin' to sail for? Bonty won't tell us. He's as mysterious about it as—as——"
Realizing that he was feeling around in his ultra-British vocabulary for a fitting Anglo-maniacal simile, I helped him out.
"As a bag of tricks, let us say. I don't know, any more than you do, Jerry. Summer seas in midwinter, and all that, I suppose. What do we care?"