“I assure you it is,” persisted Harris.
“Well, I’m going the other,” said George; and he turned and went, we, as before, following him.
Along the Ferdinand Strasse Harris and I talked about private lunatic asylums, which, Harris said, were not well managed in England. He said a friend of his, a patient in a lunatic asylum—
George said, interrupting: “You appear to have a large number of friends in lunatic asylums.”
He said it in a most insulting tone, as though to imply that that is where one would look for the majority of Harris’s friends. But Harris did not get angry; he merely replied, quite mildly:
“Well, it really is extraordinary, when one comes to think of it, how many of them have gone that way sooner or later. I get quite nervous sometimes, now.”
At the corner of the Wenzelsplatz, Harris, who was a few steps ahead of us, paused.
“It’s a fine street, isn’t it?” he said, sticking his hands in his pockets, and gazing up at it admiringly.
George and I followed suit. Two hundred yards away from us, in its very centre, was the third of these ghostly statues. I think it was the best of the three—the most like, the most deceptive. It stood boldly outlined against the wild sky: the horse on its hind legs, with its curiously attenuated tail; the man bareheaded, pointing with his plumed hat to the now entirely visible moon.
“I think, if you don’t mind,” said George—he spoke with almost a pathetic ring in his voice, his aggressiveness had completely fallen from him,—“that I will have that cab, if there’s one handy.”