“Oh, indeed!” cried Rodd banteringly. “And here since I have known you I have told you everything till I haven’t a secret that I have kept from you.”
“Why, you have had no secrets,” said Morny.
“Well—no; I suppose you couldn’t call them secrets. But you’ve got one, and you have never let it out to me.”
“No,” said Morny gravely, “because it was not mine to tell. You don’t want me to be dishonourable, Rodd?”
“Why, of course I don’t, old chap. I don’t want you to tell me till you like, only it is rather a joke sometimes that you make such a mystery of what uncle and I know as well as can be.”
“You know!” cried Morny sharply.
“Why, of course I do. It’s what I say. You want—I mean, your father does—to carry off the honour of having solved the mystery of the great fish or reptile that has been talked about for the last hundred years. I say, though, there’s that other great old-world thing that they find in the rocks. What’s his name?”
Morny shook his head.
“Here, I’ve got it—the sea-sawyer! That isn’t quite right, but it sounds something like it. Why, he must have been just like a great crocodile.”
“Ugh! Don’t talk about them,” said Morny, with a shudder.