"Upon my word, Puffin, I'm ashamed of myself for — ha! — for not taking my defeat better," he said. "A man's no business to let a game ruffle him."
Puffin gave his alto cackling laugh.
"Oh, that's all right, Major," he said. "I know it's awfully hard to lose like a gentleman."
He let this sink in, then added:
"Have a drink, old chap?"
Major Flint flew to his feet.
"Well, thank ye, thank ye," he said. "Now where's that soda water you offered me just now?" he shouted to the steward.
The speed and completeness of the reconciliation was in no way remarkable, for when two men quarrel whenever they meet, it follows that they make it up again with corresponding frequency, else there could be no fresh quarrels at all. This one had been a shade more acute than most, and the drop into amity again was a shade more precipitous.
Major Flint in his eagerness had put most of his moustache into the life-giving tumbler, and dried it on his handkerchief.
"After all, it was a most amusing incident," he said. "There was I with my back turned, waiting for you to give it up, when your bl — wretched little ball hit my foot. I must remember that. I'll serve you with the same spoon someday, at least I would if I thought it sportsmanlike. Well, well, enough said. Astonishing good whisky, that of yours."
Captain Puffin helped himself to rather more than half of what now remained in the flask.
"Help yourself, Major," he said.
"Well, thank ye, I don't mind if I do," he said, reversing the flask over the tumbler. "There's a good tramp in front of us now that the last tram has gone. Tram and tramp! Upon my word, I've half a mind to telephone for a taxi."
This, of course, was a direct hint. Puffin ought clearly to pay for a taxi, having won two half-crowns today. This casual drink did not constitute the usual drink stood by the winner, and paid for with cash over the counter. A drink (or two) from a flask was not the same thing . . . Puffin naturally saw it in another light. He had paid for the whisky which Major Flink had drunk (or owed for it) in his wine-merchant's bill. That was money just as much as a florin pushed across the counter. But he was so excessively pleased with himself over the adroitness with which he had claimed the last hole, that he quite overstepped the bounds of his habitual parsimony.
"Well, you trot along to the telephone and order a taxi," he said, "and I'll pay for it."
"Done with you," said the other.
Their comradeship was now on its most felicitous level again, and they sat on the bench outside the clubhouse till the arrival of their unusual conveyance.
"Lunching at the Poppits' tomorrow?" asked Major Flint.
"Yes. Meet you there? Good. Bridge afterwards, I suppose."
"Sure to be. Wish there was a chance of more redcurrant fool. That was a decent tipple, all but the redcurrants. If I had had all the old brandy that was served for my ration in one glass, and all the champagne in another, I should have been better content."
Captain Puffin was a great cynic in his own misogynistic way.
"Camouflage for the fair sex," 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 redcurrant fool. Bit rosy, I thought her, as we escorted her home."
"So she was," said the Major. "So she was. Said goodbye 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 tonight."
"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 someday?" 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 or more, I 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 in 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 archæology 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
