“Thanks.... No fear. What sort of fodder do you next hand out to your famishing public?”
“I’m preparing it.... You won’t like it, Mike.”
“Same graft?”
“What do you mean, graft——”
“You poor fish, are you touchy already?”
Annan reddened very slightly, then laughed:
“Kick my pants hard if ever I’m that, Mike. May the Lord defend me from solemnity and smugness!... Mike, I wish we could see more of each other.... Things worry me a lot sometimes. A fellow has got to believe in himself, yet complacency is destruction.... All this—you know what I mean—disconcerts a man.... I admit it. It’s come to a point where actually I don’t know whether my stuff is worth immortality, or a tinker’s dam, or zero.
“Yet I feel I can deliver the hootch.”
“It’s hootch all right.”
“Well—God knows.... Like the Mad Hatter—or was it the Rabbit?—I’ve used the best ingredient.”