"Strikes me that sleeplessness of yours must be becoming serious. You look several degrees less fit than you did a year ago, and that's saying a good deal."
Lenox took his pipe from between his teeth, and regarded his subaltern steadily for a few seconds.
"When I need medical advice I'll send for Courtenay," he said, a hint of authority in his bantering tone. "We were discussing tobacco, and a woman; and the conjunction reminds me of an inspired German proverb I happened on the other day. 'God made man first; then He made woman; then He felt so sorry for man that He made—tobacco.' Supreme, isn't it?"
Lenox chuckled with keen appreciation over the characteristically
Teuton bit of cynicism, and Richardson laughed aloud.
"Rather rough on woman, that. You might almost have originated it yourself."
"Wish I had. I'd be proud of it. Stick to tobacco, Dick, and you'll never be tempted to blow your brains out. You may take my word for it, that jar of Arcadian mixture," he specified it with his pipe-stem, "is worth all the women in creation put together."
The bitterness that of late years had so puzzled and distressed his friend sounded again in his tone, and the laughter went out of Richardson's eyes.
But Lenox, absorbed in his own reflections, noticed nothing.
"Let's hear what you've been doing with yourself at home, Dick," he said suddenly. "You're not coherent on paper. I want a few facts. You went abroad latterly, didn't you? Toboganning, and that sort of thing, I suppose?"
"Yes; went with those cousins I told you of—to Zermatt."