Page:Anthony Hope - The Dolly Dialogues.djvu/79

 'One moment he's the happiest dog in the world, and the next—well, the next, it's the deuce.'

'But,' I objected, 'not surely without good reason for such a change?'

'Reason? Bosh! The least thing does it.'

I flicked the ash from my cigar.

'It may,' I remarked, 'affect you in this extraordinary way, but surely it is not so with most people?'

'Perhaps not,' George conceded. 'Most people are cold-blooded asses.'

'Very likely the explanation lies in that fact, said I.

'I didn't mean you, old chap,' said George, with a penitence which showed that he had meant me.

'Oh, all right, all right,' said I.

'But when a man's really far gone, there's nothing else in the world but it.'

'That seems to me not to be a healthy condition,' said I.

'Healthy? Oh, you old idiot, Sam! Who's talking of health? Now, only last night I met her at a dance. I had five dances with her—talked to her half the evening, in fact. Well, you'd think that would last some time, wouldn't you?'

'I should certainly have supposed so,' I assented.

'So it would with most chaps, I daresay, but with me—confound it, I feel as if I hadn't seen her for six months!'