"A mixture of threats and bribes," Darwen suggested. "We'll capture him and frighten the wits out of him; say that we're going to give him in charge for attempted murder. Then you can offer him a small sum to go away and stay away. We'll explain that if he ever gets within speaking distance of you again, you'll promptly have him arrested."
"That's it," Bounce agreed.
"I suppose that is the best," Carstairs said, thoughtfully. "Do you know I feel when I think of him that a damn good licking is the only thing I can offer him. Yet when I consider that the poor devil is permanently lame because—well, because I went off with his girl, well, dash it, he has my entire sympathy. In my case I remember distinctly that it gave me a sensation of extreme pleasure to think I was whacking that brute for the sake of the girl. I'm not exactly pugilistic, but I've never experienced anything so pleasureable as the one or two smites I got home on him with the idea that they were for the girl. I can understand the persistence with which he is following me. She's the finest girl in all the world." His keen grey eyes seemed to glow with a fierce ardour. At that moment he was violently in love.
They looked at him in open wonder.
He stood up and stretched himself. "I should feel a better man if I went out now and searched out that gipsy and bashed him, and then went straight across to the girl and married her. What the devil are these wishy-washy dances, these tuppenny ha'penny jobs, this sham respectability? Simply a drag on a man's actions. I want to do something."
Bounce nodded vigorously. "You're fit," he said, "trained fine. In the pink of condition. That's how you feels when you comes ashore after a three months' cruise. 'To hell with everything. Let's do something.' That's it, ain't it?"
"That's it precisely."
"How you feel at the end of the 'footer' season," Darwen chimed in. "Or when a match is postponed and you've got to dissipate your energies on the desert air. Usually you make a thundering idiot of yourself."
"I suppose that is so, but you enjoy it." Carstairs became thoughtful again. "There are only certain times, practically moments, when you can do these things; you do not appreciate them in your normal condition, besides there's the guv'nor and the mater, and really I know very little about the girl."
Darwen clapped him on the shoulder. "Wake up, old chap! You're dreaming. You can't marry a gipsy girl; she'd want to feed you on gipsy stew and half-hatched pheasant's eggs."