Page:The Story of the Gadsbys - Kipling (1888).djvu/93

 You've paid your toll to misfortune—why should your wife be picked out more than anybody else's?

—I can talk just as reasonably as you can, but you don't understand—you don't understand. And then there's The Butcha. Deuce knows where the ayah takes him to sit in the evening! He has a bit of a cough. Haven't you noticed it?

—Bosh! The Brigadier's jumping out of his skin with pure condition. He's got a muzzle like a rose-leaf and the chest of a two-year old. What's demoralised you?

—Funk. That's the long and the short of it. Funk!

—But what is there to funk?

—Everything. It's ghastly.

—Ah! I see. "You don't want to fight, And by Jingo when we do, You've got the kid, you've got the wife, You've got the money, too." That's about the case, eh?

—I suppose that's it. But it's not for myself. It's because of them. At least, I think it is.

—Are you sure? Looking at the matter in a cold-blooded light, the wife is provided for even if you were wiped out to-night. She has an ancestral home to go to, money, and The Brigadier to carry on the illustrious name.

—Then it is for myself or because they are part of me. You don't see it. My life's so good, so pleasant, as it is, that I want to make it quite safe. Can't you understand?

—Perfectly. "Shelter-pit for the Orf'cer's charger," as they say in the Line.

—And I have everything to my hand to make it so. I'm sick of the strain and the worry for their sakes out here; and there isn't a single real difficulty to prevent my dropping it altogether. It'll only cost me Jack, I hope you'll never know the shame that I've been going through for the past six months.