"'Away for Rio!' I'll sing the solo, if I can remember it, and you sing the chorus, Sailor!"
Such stern protests were raised by those who knew the capacity of Klondyke's lung power that very reluctantly he gave up this project, yet the very indifferent backing of his shipmate may have carried more weight with him than the pressure of public opinion.
When Edward Ambrose and the Sailor had gone their ways and the others apparently had gone to bed, Klondyke doffed the coat of civilization in favor of a very faded and generally disreputable Ramblers' blazer, lit his pipe, and then, in the most comfortable chair he could find, began to read again "The Adventures of Dick Smith on the High Seas."
"Yes, he's a wonderful chap," he kept muttering at intervals. After he had been moved to this observation several times, he was interrupted by the reappearance of the Prince, who looked uncommonly serious, in an elaborate quilted silk smoking jacket that he affected in his postprandial hours.
"This chap Harper," suddenly opened the Prince. "I want to have a word with you about him."
The look on the face of the elder and less reputable brother seemed pretty clearly to show that this desire was not shared. But duty had to be done, and the Prince seated himself doggedly on the high fender, his back to the fire.
"Tell me," he said, "what you know about this chap Harper."
Somehow, Klondyke hardly felt inclined. For one thing, the slow but sure growth of the Foreign Office manner, which he was able to detect in his younger brother every time he returned from his wanderings, always seemed to rattle him a bit. Of course Otto was a first-rate chap according to his lights; still, Klondyke was the elder, and if questions must be asked he did not feel bound to answer them.
A mild but concentrated gaze conveyed as much.
"Ted Ambrose brought him here," said the Prince, with a nice feeling for these nuances. "A good chap, I dare say ... quite a good chap ... but..."