Page:The Story of the Gadsbys - Kipling (1888).djvu/92

 unless you go Home? Take six months, then, and come out in October. If I could slay off a brother or two, I s'pose I should be a Marquis of sorts. Any fool can be that; but it needs men, Gaddy—men like you—to lead flanking squadrons properly. Don't you delude yourself into the belief that you're going Home to take your place, and prance about among pink-nosed dowagers. You aren't built that way. I know better.

—A man has a right to live his life as happily as he can. You aren't married.

—No—praise be to Providence and the one or two women who have had the good sense to jawab me.

—Then you don't know what it is to go into your own room and see your wife's head on the pillow, and when everything else is safe, and the house bunded up for the night, to wonder whether the roof-beams won't give and kill her.

(aside).—Revelations first and second! (Aloud.) So-o! I knew a man who got squiffy at our Mess once and confided to me that he never helped his wife on to her horse without praying that she'd break her neck before she came back. All husbands aren't alike, you see.

—What on earth has that to do with my case? The man must ha' been mad, or his wife as bad as they make 'em.

(aside).—No fault of yours if either weren't all you say. You've forgotten the time when you were insane about the Herriott woman. You always were a good hand at forgetting. (Aloud.) Not more mad than men who go to the other extreme. Be reasonable, Gaddy. Your roof-beams are sound enough.

—That was only a way of speaking. I've been uneasy and worried about the wife ever since that awful business three years ago when I nearly lost her. Can you wonder?

—Oh, a shell never falls twice in the same place.