"How do you know that?" I said, thinking that I had turned the tables on him.
"Never mind how. I know it well enough."
"By the Inflexible Method?"
"Of course not," he said with some annoyance. "There are different kinds of certainty, and this is one of the most certain of all."
"More certain than the Inflexible——?"
"Oh, damn the Inflexible Method!" he cried. "I'm sick to death of it. You'll do me a kindness by not mentioning it again."
"All right; I'm as sick of it as you are. After all, it's not your philosophy I'm thinking of; what I am concerned about is your life. Now, Scattergood," I added—for I was an old friend,—"frankly, between you and me, don't you think you're a fool?"
"My dear fellow, I am and always have been a ——" and here he used that objectionable word—"always have been a certain sort of fool. But not about Ethelberta. We understand each other perfectly. She looks after me and takes care of me like a—like a mother. My life is absolutely safe in her hands—I mean, of course, on her back."
"Confound those mixed metaphors!" I cried. "That's the seventh I've heard to-day, and they're horribly confusing, even when they are corrected as you corrected yours. Now, what on earth do you mean?"
He looked at me curiously. "I mean," he said, "that Ethelberta may be trusted to the uttermost."