“By the way,” said Mitchell—“excuse me for interrupting, Peter—but wasn’t old Danny, there, a gentleman once? I’ve heard chaps say he was.”
“I know he was,” said Peter.
“Gentleman Once! Who’s talking about Gentleman Once?” said an awful voice, suddenly and quickly. “About twenty or thirty years ago I was called Gentleman Once or Gentleman Jack, I don’t know which—Get out! Get out, I say! It’s all lies, and you’re the devil. There’s four devils sitting by the fire. I see them.”
Two of the four devils by the fire looked round, rather startled.
Danny was sitting up, his awful bloodshot eyes glaring in the firelight, and his ruined head looking like the bloated head of a hairy poodle that had been drowned and dried. Peter went to the old man and soothed him by waving off the snakes and devils with his hands, and telling them to go.
“I’ve heard Danny on the Gentleman Once racket before,” remarked Mitchell.
“Seems funny, doesn’t it, for a man to be proud of the fact that he was called ‘Gentleman Once’ about twenty years ago?”
“Seems more awful than funny to me,” said Joe.
“You’re right, Joe,” said Mitchell. “But the saddest things are often funny.”
When Peter came back he went on with his story, and was only interrupted once or twice by Danny waking up and calling him to drive off the snakes, and green and crimson dogs with crocodile heads, and devils with flaming tails, and those unpleasant sorts of things that force their company on boozers and madmen.