Of some few amiable qualities with which it has pleased heaven to endow me beyond the majority of my fellows, a Marlborough-temper is by no means the least in importance. I looked down in the ingenuous face of the searcher after wisdom, quenching, like Malvolio, my familiar smile with an austere regard of control.
"Semper felix," I observed hopelessly. "You're right in saying that the question has been asked before. It has been asked. But daylight in the morning is the right time to enter on that inquiry. For the present, we must leave the world-wearied prince to rest in his ancestral vault, where he was laid by the pious hands of Horatio and Fortinbras—where, each in his narrow cell for ever laid, the rude forefathers of The Hamlet sleep."
"Quotation—ain't it?" suggested Moriarty critically.
"No." I sighed.
"Well then, I'm beggared if I can see anything in that sort of an answer," remarked the young fellow resentfully.
"Dear boy," I replied; "I never imagined that you could. I would you had but the wit; 'twere better than your dukedom. By-the-way-what is Jack's other name?"
"Which Jack? Old Jack, or Young Jack, or Jack the Shellback, or Fog-a-bolla Jack?"
"Young Jack; the chap that offered to ride Cleopatra."
"Jack Frost."
"Right. Good-bye. And remember our arrangement."