“Well,” he would say, as he sat ponderously down with the air of a man opening an interesting conversation, “I was just figuring it out that eleven months ago to-day I was in Pekin.”
“That’s odd,” I said, “I was just reckoning that eleven days ago I was in Poughkeepsie.”
“They don’t call it Pekin over there,” he said. “It’s sounded Pei-Chang.”
“I know,” I said, “it’s the same way with Poughkeepsie, they pronounce it P’Keepsie.”
“The Chinese,” he went on musingly, “are a strange people.”
“So are the people in P’Keepsie,” I added, “awfully strange.”
That kind of retort would sometimes stop him, but not always. He was especially dangerous if he was found with a newspaper in his hand; because that meant that some item of foreign intelligence had gone to his brain.
Not that I should have objected to Yarner describing his travels. Any man who has bought a ticket round the world and paid for it, is entitled to that.
But it was his manner of discussion that I considered unpermissible.
Last week, for example, in an unguarded moment I fell a victim. I had been guilty of the imprudence—I forget in what connection—of speaking of lions. I realized at once that I had done wrong—lions, giraffes, elephants, rickshaws and natives of all brands, are topics to avoid in talking with a traveller.