"We don't," said Andrew.
"As you will," said Bakkus. "Again I prophesy that you'll be drilling awkward squads in barrack yards before you've done. It's all you're fit for."
Andrew smiled or grinned with closed lips. It was his grim smile, many years afterwards to become familiar to larger bodies of men than awkward squads. Once more he had won his little victory.
So peace was made. They finished up the miserable fag end of the season and with modest success carried out their month's contract in the northern towns. But even Andrew's drastic leadership could not prevail on Bakkus's indolence to sign an extension. Montmartre called him. An engagement. He also spoke vaguely of singing lessons. Now that Parisians had returned to Paris, he could not afford to lose his connections. With cynical frankness he also confessed his disinclination to be recognized in a music-hall Punch and Judy show by his brother the Archdeacon.
"Archdeacons," said Andrew--he had a confused idea of their prelatical status, "don't go to music-halls."
"They do in this country," said Bakkus. "They're everywhere. They infest the air like microbes. You only have to open your mouth and you get your lungs filled with them. It's a pestilential country and I've done with it."
"All right," replied Andrew, "I'll run the show on my own."
But the Palladium syndicate, willing to book "The Great Patapon and Little Patou" for a further term, declined to rebook Little Patou by himself. He returned to Paris, where he found Bakkus wallowing in absinthe and philosophic sloth.
"We might have made our fortune in England," said he.
Said Bakkus coolly sipping his absinthe, "I have no desire to make my fortune. Have you?"