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78 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&#8203;—&#8203;the date I have named in my will for their publication&#8203;—&#8203;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&#8203;—&#8203;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 spring-like manner.

“Yes, that’s true enough,” said Puffin. “Long roads they were, and dry roads at that, and if I stuck to them