Page:The Story of the Gadsbys - Kipling (1888).djvu/64

 how it seemed that, in all this new life, I was being guided for your sake as well as my own.

(aside).—Then Mafflin was right! They know, and we—we're blind—all of us. (Lightly.) 'Getting a little beyond our depth, dear, aren't we? I'll remember, and, if I fail, let me be punished as I deserve.

—There shall be no punishment. We'll start into life together from here—you and I—and no one else.

—And no one else. (A pause.) Your eyelashes are all wet, Sweet? Was there ever such a quaint, little Absurdity?

—Was there ever such nonsense talked before?

(knocking the ashes out of his pipe).—'Tisn't what we say, it's what we don't say that helps. And it's all the profoundest philosophy. But no one would understand—even if it were put into a book.

—The idea! No—only we ourselves, or people like ourselves—if there are any people like us.

(magisterially).—All people not like ourselves are blind idiots.

(wiping her eyes).—Do you think, then, that there are any people as happy as we are?

—'Must be—unless we've appropriated all the happiness in the world.

(looking towards Simla).—Poor dears! Just fancy, if we have!

—Then we'll hang on to the whole show, for it's a great deal too jolly to lose—eh, wife o' mine?

—Oh, Pip, Pip! How much of you is a solemn married man, and how much a horrid, slangy schoolboy?

—When you tell me how much of you was eighteen last birthday, and how much is as old as the Sphinx and twice as mysterious, perhaps I'll attend to you. Lend me that banjo. The spirit moveth me to yowl at the sunset

—Mind! It's not tuned. Ah! How that jars!