Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/72

 are brave, generous, forgiving, confiding, 'Je vous en fais mon compliment!' There is no more to be said. Where your Gourd grew, nothing green will ever spring up again! What say you, Bones? I think you and I are well out of the whole thing!"

He waved his fleshless hand gently with the gesture of one who puts from him some dim and distant recollection.

"There is a bitter flavour," said he, "about that remark which I should hardly have expected, and which is by no means to my taste. You and I can surely afford to look at these things from a comprehensive, philosophical, and indulgent point of view. No more Gourds are likely to grow for either of us; and although your style of figure is, perhaps, less entitled to defy the worm than mine, yet I think you have but little to fear from the kind which caused such an outbreak of temper in the disgusted prophet.