"I shall make a mess of it," Urquhart retorted.
"Is this going to be a neck-breaking expedition?" That was from Lingen, who now had an object in life.
"I never said so," Urquhart told him. "I said heart-breaking—a far simpler affair."
"What is going to break your heart in it, please?" Lucy asked him. She saw that there lay something behind his rattle.
"Well," said Urquhart, brazening it out, "it would break mine to get over the snow-field—some eight miles of it, there are—and to find that I couldn't get down. That might easily happen."
"And what would you do?"
James fixed her with his eyeglass. "That's where the neck-breaking might intervene," he said. "Jimmy would rather risk his neck any day."
"Than his heart!"
"Heart!" said Vera. "No such thing. Quite another organ. It's a case of dinner. He'd risk his neck for a dinner, and so would any man."
"I believe you are right," said James.