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80 Puffin added his falsetto cackle to this merriment.

“And, often I’ve thought to myself,” he said, “‘There’s my friend the Major in his study opposite, with all his diaries round him, making a note here, and copying an extract there, and conferring with the Viceroy one day, and reprimanding the Maharajah of Bom-be-boo another. He’s spending the evening on India’s coral strand, he is, having tiffin and shooting tigers and Gawd knows what—’”

The Major’s laughter boomed out again.

“And I never kept a diary in my life!” he cried. “Why there’s enough cream in this situation to make a dishful of meringues. You and I, you know, the students of Tilling! The serious-minded students who do a hard day’s work when all the pretty ladies have gone to bed. Often and often has old&#8203;—&#8203;I mean has that fine woman, Miss Mapp, told me that I work too hard at night! Recommended me to get earlier to bed, and do my work between six and eight in the morning! Six and eight in the morning! That’s a queer time of day to recommend an old campaigner to be awake at! Often she’s talked to you, too, I bet my hat, about sitting up late and exhausting the nervous faculties.”

Major Flint choked and laughed and inhaled tobacco smoke till he got purple in the face.

“And you sitting up one side of the street,” he gasped, “pretending to be interested in Roman roads, and me on the other pulling a long face over my diaries, and neither of us with a Roman road or a diary to our names. Let’s have an end to such unsociable arrangements, old friend; you bring your Roman roads and the bottle to lay the dust over to me one night, and I’ll bring my diaries and my peg over to you the next. Never drink alone&#8203;—&#8203;one of my maxims in life&#8203;—&#8203;if you can find someone to drink with you. And