Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/53

Rh some way it would always be better to have him on your side than against you.

"I disappoint you, I see," he announced, without looking up, as I completed what I thought was a secret survey of him.

"No," I told him. "You puzzle me."

"Not half so much, I fancy, as you have been puzzling me," was his retort. "And I've just been thinking that you ought to read Browning. He'd really help you a lot!"

"Who's Browning?" I asked.

"He's the gentleman who first observed that it's better being good than bad, and that it's much safer being sane than mad—bromidic utterances, I'll allow, but then one might claim that are bromides simply because they express essential truths that are so undisputed everybody has to keep on saying 'em!"

"I'll get his works!" I solemnly promised.

"Please don't," implored my Hero-Man. "Or I'll find you my enemy for life. But you don't get much time for reading, I take it?"

I confessed that I didn't. I even told him that I hated to dwaddledawdle [sic], that I had to keep on the move, that I needed excitement as much as most women needed tea.