ing 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 ashore, 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 buttering
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 noble 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