“Sport!... Look here, let’s leave it all where it is, we’re neither of us much out of pocket.”
“Leave it all where it is!” scornfully. “Small wonder the Hebrew wearieth of the slack and foolish stranger, and desires greatly a nation of his own kith and blood.”
“You’ll get jolly well fed up with your own kith and blood, when you can’t cheat ’em like the slack and foolish stranger.”
“We’ll have to import a few of you for the express purpose.”
It struck Richard that though David in this wrangle was calling attention to his own racial characteristic only to buffoon it, yet there was a sub-stratum of seriousness too, in his laughing persistence.
“I suggest,” said David, “that as we are sadly incapable of adjusting the matter in our head—after eight years’ public school instruction in higher mathematics—that we reconstruct as we go along, passing the money to and fro till we get it right. Now ... we’re on the bus again. You pay!”
“Lend me half-a-crown,” said Richard obediently.
“Give me back my half-crown to lend you, then.”
“That didn’t come in, on the ’bus.”
“It’s coming in now!” David made a grab for Richard’s pocket and extracted the coin. “There you are,” giving it to him; while Piccadilly looked on astonished, at the two youths absorbedly passing money to and fro as they strolled along the pavement. “Now you give it back to me unbroken and twopence for the fares ... that’s right, isn’t it? You agreed to pay the fares. And then we settle up my little debt.”