Part 7 (2/2)

Captain Puffin was a great cynic in his own misogynistic way.

”Camouflage for the fair s.e.x,” he said. ”A woman will lick up half a bottle of brandy if it's called plum-pudding, and ask for more, whereas if you offered her a small brandy and soda, she would think you were insulting her.”

”Bless them, the funny little fairies,” said the Major.

”Well, what I tell you is true, Major,” said Puffin. ”There's old Mapp.

Teetotaller she calls herself, but she played a bo'sun's part in that red-currant fool. Bit rosy, I thought her, as we escorted her home.”

”So she was,” said the Major. ”So she was. Said good-bye to us on her doorstep as if she thought she was a perfect Venus Ana--Ana something.”

”Anno Domini,” giggled Puffin.

”Well, well, we all get long in the tooth in time,” said Major Flint charitably. ”Fine figure of a woman, though.”

”Eh?” said Puffin archly.

”Now none of your sailor-talk ash.o.r.e, Captain,” said the Major, in high good humour. ”I'm not a marrying man any more than you are. Better if I had been perhaps, more years ago than I care to think about. Dear me, my wound's going to trouble me to-night.”

”What do you do for it, Major?” asked Puffin.

”Do for it? Think of old times a bit over my diaries.”

”Going to let the world have a look at them some day?” asked Puffin.

”No, sir, I am not,” said Major Flint. ”Perhaps a hundred years hence--the date I have named in my will for their publication--someone may think them not so uninteresting. But all this toasting and b.u.t.tering and grilling and frying your friends, and serving them up hot for all the old cats at a tea-table to mew over--Pah!”

Puffin was silent a moment in appreciation of these n.o.ble sentiments.

”But you put in a lot of work over them,” he said at length. ”Often when I'm going up to bed, I see the light still burning in your sitting-room window.”

”And if it comes to that,” rejoined the Major, ”I'm sure I've often dozed off when I'm in bed and woken again, and pulled up my blind, and what not, and there's your light still burning. Powerful long roads those old Romans must have made, Captain.”

The ice was not broken, but it was cracking in all directions under this unexampled thaw. The two had clearly indicated a mutual suspicion of each other's industrious habits after dinner.... They had never got quite so far as this before: some quarrel had congealed the surface again. But now, with a desperate disagreement just behind them, and the unusual luxury of a taxi just in front, the vernal airs continued blowing in the most springlike manner.

”Yes, that's true enough,” said Puffin. ”Long roads they were, and dry roads at that, and if I stuck to them from after my supper every evening till midnight or more, should be smothered in dust.”

”Unless you washed the dust down just once in a while,” said Major Flint.

”Just so. Brain-work's an exhausting process; requires a little stimulant now and again,” said Puffin. ”I sit in my chair, you understand, and perhaps doze for a bit after my supper, and then I'll get my maps out, and have them handy beside me. And then, if there's something interesting the evening paper, perhaps I'll have a look at it, and bless me, if by that time it isn't already half-past ten or eleven, and it seems useless to tackle archaeology then. And I just--just while away the time till I'm sleepy. But there seems to be a sort of legend among the ladies here, that I'm a great student of local topography and Roman roads, and all sorts of truck, and I find it better to leave it at that. Tiresome to go into long explanations. In fact,” added Puffin in a burst of confidence, ”the study I've done on Roman roads these last six months wouldn't cover a threepenny piece.”

Major Flint gave a loud, choking guffaw and beat his fat leg.

”Well, if that's not the best joke I've heard for many a long day,” he said. ”There I've been in the house opposite you these last two years, seeing your light burning late night after night, and thinking to myself, 'There's my friend Puffin still at it! Fine thing to be an enthusiastic archaeologist like that. That makes short work of a lonely evening for him if he's so buried in his books or his maps--Mapps, ha!

ha!--that he doesn't seem to notice whether it's twelve o'clock or one or two, maybe!' And all the time you've been sitting snoozing and boozing in your chair, with your gla.s.s handy to wash the dust down.”

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