“Nor soft, mellow voices what sez ‘nope’?”

“Nope; they always toot through trumpets—or is it shawms?”

“Well, I’ll be dinged!” he swore.

“You’re quite likely to be.”

“All right,” cheerfully, “let’s be dinged together? Eh? What y’say?”

“Mebbe; how do you begin?”

Facilis descensus Averni,” he suggested.

“Talk a language I understand,” but she quite understood that stale Latin quotation, “Easy is the road down.”

“That is to say,” Morris cast about for a translation. “‘Let her go, Gallagher, and boomp! you’re at the bottom!’ Let’s—uh—let’s toboggan?”

He slipped a hand under the steamer-rug and grasped her wrist.