"Come along. We'll give him till midday. Here's your stick."
And I helped him to his feet and bore him off.
II
Ordinarily I do not find it easy to talk to very young men. I have been as young as they, but they have not been as old as I, and I know this but they do not. Young women—that is another matter, and I will make a very candid confession. I now envy these youngsters their youth. I envied Smith his youth. Despite his limp, I was conscious of his tallness and lissomness as he hobbled by my side. And I will add that it is not an unmixed joy to be asked to do a young goddess's shopping for her because you are "quite the kindest person she knows."
It would hardly be true to say that my acquaintance with young Smith had made no progress at all. I had made quite a number of interesting observations on his idyll of petrol, love and crime. But he for his part was still at the stage of apology for his "neck" in asking Joan to ask me to buy his pipes and tobacco for him, and by way of leveling up the obligation had actually sent for a copy of that dandy book that I as a novelist must on no account miss, The Crimson Specter of Hangman Hollow. But I was still "Sir" to him and he hardly "Chummy" to me, and our small-talk was quite small. It was certainly small enough as we left the thymy hollow and slowly made for the cliff-tops.
"Tell me if I walk too quickly for you," I said. His hurt was to his right ankle, and his stick left a trail of little round holes in the turf.
"Oh, that's all right, thanks, sir," he said cheerfully, pegging away; and he added with a chuckle, "I say, between you and I, old Philip was rather in a paddy, wasn't he?"
"Between you and me he was," I said. I corrected him quite deliberately. Now that the failure of the sparking-plug had put this opportunity into my hands I was determined at all costs to know more of him. Hence my—well grossièreté. But he noticed nothing. Instead he broke out with a feigned enthusiasm.