“Oh, yes—get me off the rails, of course! But I always notice that when a fellow makes a delirious fool of himself about a woman (hiccup)—fool enough, I mean, to become engaged—he becomes mollar’ly (hic)—mollarly austere.”
“Oh, damn!” said Doome.
Ffolliott raised drunken eyelids:
“But saying damn can go with great moral austerity.” He paused and uttered a giggle. “That’s an epigram, I think,” he said.
“What on earth are you jabbering about, Ffolliott?”
Ffolliott stuck to his theme with drunken persistence.
“A fellow who is engaged doesn’t seem to laugh at the same places in the comedy of life that he laughs at before he is engaged.”
“Get on, Ffolliott—get on. You talk like Euclid trying to invent a comic song.”
Ffolliott blinked:
“I’ve always noticed,” said he—“that a fellow does not become really austere until he is engaged....” He sighed heavily. “I know such a good chap, who’s become engaged. He used to read the Pink Un; but now he reads The Descent of Man.”