“Has Charles done any chemises for you?” Guy inquired.
“I wanted Charles to do some little Roman chemises for me, Guy,” Ginger confided. “I think I have the fullness for them—well, it would have meant giving up all my little feminine frills and laces, of course, and Charles simply would not hear of it! He said it would be a perfect crime—and he does so love to work with his laces, Guy, I simply didn’t have the heart! But then what’s your feeling on it, Guy?” she asked finally, giving a Carmenesque toss of her head.
“Charles could be right, of course,” said Guy, after allowing it a moment’s thought.
** ***
Grand gave a bit of a shock to the British white-hunters along the Congo (as well as to a couple of venerable old American writers who were there on safari at the time) when he turned up in a major hunting expedition with a 75-millimeter howitzer.
“She throws a muzzle-velocity of twelve thousand f.p.s.,” Grand liked to quip. “She’ll stop anything on this continent.”
Ordinarily used by the French Army as an artillery fieldpiece, the big gun, stripped of all but its barrel, chamber, and firing mechanism, still weighed well over a hundred and fifty pounds.
“She’ll stop anything that moves,” Guy would say, “—including a surfaced whale.”
Grand had three natives carry the giant gun, while he, wearing a huge cushion-device around his stomach and a pith helmet so enormous that half his face was concealed beneath it, sauntered jauntily alongside, speaking knowledgeably to other members of the party about every aspect of firearms and big-game hunting.
“A spot of bother in Kenya bush the other day,” he would say, “the big cat took two of our best boys.” Then he would give his monstrous weapon an affectionate pat and add knowingly, “—the cat changed her tune when she’d had a taste of the old seventy-five! Yessir, this baby carries a real wallop, you can bet your life on that!”