Page:The Story of the Gadsbys - Kipling (1888).djvu/31

 you begin squabbling. Thank Goodness, here's Anthony—looking like a ghost.

—'Evening, Blayne. It's raining in sheets. Get me a whisky peg boy. The roads are something ghastly.

—How's Mingle?

—Very bad, and more frightened. I handed him over to Fewton. Mingle might just as well have called him in the first place, instead of bothering me.

—He's a nervous little chap. What has he got, this time?

—'Can't quite say. A very bad tummy and a blue funk so far. He asked me at once if it was cholera, and I told him not to be a fool. That soothed him.

—Poor devil! The funk does half the business in a man of that build.

(lighting a cheroot).—I firmly believe the funk will kill him if he stays down. You know the amount of trouble he's been giving Fewton for the last three weeks. He's doing his very best to frighten himself into the grave.

.—Poor little devil! Why doesn't he get away?

—'Can't. He has his leave all right, but he's so dipped he can't take it, and I don't think his name on paper would raise four annas. That's in confidence, though.

—All the Station knows it.

—"I suppose I shall have to die here," he said, squirming all across the bed. He's quite made up his mind to Kingdom Come. And I know he has nothing more than a wet weather tummy if he could only keep a hand on himself.

—That's bad. That's very bad. Poor little Miggy. Good little chap, too. I say—

—What do you say?

—Well, look here—anyhow. If it's like that—as you say—I say fifty.