Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/134

 don't fight for the crown at all. They keep it up between them. The pillars of the world! The tiger and the kangaroo!" he boomed this out in a mock heroic voice, strutting with heavy playfulness. Then he laughed, looking winsomely at Somers. Heaven, what a beauty he had!

"Tiger, tiger, burning bright," he resumed, sing-song, abstracted. "I knew you'd come. Even since I read your first book of poems—how many years is it ago?—ten?—eleven? I knew you'd come.

Of course you had to come."

"Well, here I am, anyhow," said Somers.

"You are. You are!" shouted the other, and Somers Was quite scared. Then Kangaroo laughed again. "Get up," he said. "Stand up and let me look at you."

The two men stood facing one another: Kangaroo large, with his full stomach and his face hulking down, and his queer, glaring eyes; Somers slight and aloof-looking. Cooley eyed him up and down.

"A little bit of a fellow—too delicate for rough me," he said, then started quoting again:

I've got fat and bulky on all the poetry I never wrote. How do you do, Mr Somers? How do you like Australia, and its national animal, the kangaroo? ? Again he smiled with the sudden glow of warmth in his dark eyes, startling and wonderful.

"Australia is a weird country, and it's national animal is beyond me," Somers said, smiling rather palely.

"Oh no, it isn't. You'll be patting it on the back as soon as you've taken your hands out of your pockets."

He stood silent a long while, with feet apart, looking abstractedly at Somers through his pince nez.

"Ah, well," he sighed at last. "We shall see. We shall see. But I'm very glad you came. You understand what I mean, I know, when I say we are birds of the same feather. Aren't we?"

"In some ways I think we are."