"Oh, very well! But you haven't the ghost of a right to lay claim to nerves," Captain Bingo obstinately asseverates. "Now look at me."
"I'm hanged if I want to!" declares Beauvayse. "You're not a cheering object." He drops back into the bamboo chair again.
"Flyblown, do I look?" inquires Bingo, with dispassionate interest.
"Well, yes, decidedly," Beauvayse agrees, without removing his eyes from the whitewashed verandah-pillar at which they blankly stare.
"Streaky yellow in the whites of the eyes, and pouchy under 'em?" Captain Bingo demands of his young friend with unmistakable relish. "'Yes' again? And I grouse and maunder? Of course I do, my dear chap! How can I help it? A married man who, for all he knows, may be a widower——"
"I wish to God I knew I was one!"
"My good fellow?"
"You heard what I said," Beauvayse flings over his shoulder.
Captain Bingo, his hands upon his straddling knees, regards his junior with circular eyes staring out of a large, kind, rather foolish face of utter consternation.
"That you wished to God you were a widower?"