The landlord rallied his forces for a great effort. “We get some rummy customers here at times,” he said.
“You must attract them,” said Bobby.
The landlord could make nothing of that. He turned about and said “Umph”—meaningly.
“Umph,” said Bobby, just saturating it with meaning.
The landlord made a cunning attempt as they were departing. “Hope you enjoyed your breakfast,” he said. “I don’t know rightly whether it’s a lady or a gentleman you got with you—still——”
Bobby’s mercurial temperament was far too high just then. “It’s hermaphrodite,” he said in a confidential whisper and left the landlord with that.
But when they had gone a few miles further he told Sargon he had decided to buy him some socks and a jacket and trousers at the next shop they saw. “As it is,” he said, “you are ambiguous. And then we’ll put that hat and jacket and the sacking by the wayside for anyone who wants to use them. And I’ll have to send another telegram. I made a mistake.”
Bobby’s mental state became more febrile as the day wore on. He developed a wonderfully circumstantial lie about a cottage and a fire and how his friend had only escaped with just a few articles of clothing hastily put on. “Everything else,” said Bobby, “practically incinerated.” They were going down to take refuge with a variable relation, a brother, an uncle, a maiden aunt. As the day progressed the circumstances of the fire became richer and more remarkable and the particulars of the escape more definitely thrilling. Bobby told such lies with great sincerity and gravity; they were a form of freedom—from reality.
Sargon himself said very little. For him this adventure was a severer endurance test than Bobby realized at the time. For the most part he was either cramped up and boxed in under the hood and wind-screen and being jolted and jumped along the hard high-road, or he was hastily changing some garment by the roadside, or he was sitting still in the side-car taking refreshment and being lucidly but perplexingly, and usually quite unnecessarily, explained.