Chapter 8

And these two, as I have told you,
Were the friends of Hiawatha,
Chibiabos, the musician,
And the very strong man, Kwasind.
--Hiawatha.

TORPENHOW was paging the last sheets of some manuscript, while the
Nilghai, who had come for chess and remained to talk tactics, was
reading through the first part, commenting scornfully the while.

'It's picturesque enough and it's sketchy,' said he; 'but as a serious
consideration of affairs in Eastern Europe, it's not worth much.'

'It's off my hands at any rate. . . . Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine
slips altogether, aren't there? That should make between eleven and
twelve pages of valuable misinformation. Heigho!' Torpenhow shuffled
the writing together and hummed--

Young lambs to sell, young lambs to sell,
If I'd as much money as I could tell,
I never would cry, Young lambs to sell!
?

Dick entered, self-conscious and a little defiant, but in the best of tempers
with all the world.

'Back at last?' said Torpenhow.

'More or less. What have you been doing?'

'Work. Dickie, you behave as though the Bank of England were behind
you. Here's Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday gone and you haven't done a
line. It's scandalous.'

'The notions come and go, my children--they come and go like our
'baccy,' he answered, filling his pipe. 'Moreover,' he stooped to thrust a
spill into the grate, 'Apollo does not always stretch his---- Oh, confound
your clumsy jests, Nilghai!'

'This is not the place to preach the theory of direct inspiration,' said the
Nilghai, returning Torpenhow's large and workmanlike bellows to their
nail on the wall. 'We believe in cobblers' wax. La!--where you sit down.'

'If you weren't so big and fat,' said Dick, looking round for a weapon,
'I'd----'

'No skylarking in my rooms. You two smashed half my furniture last
time you threw the cushions about. You might have the decency to say
How d'you do? to Binkie. Look at him.'

Binkie had jumped down from the sofa and was fawning round Dick's
knee, and scratching at his boots.

'Dear man!' said Dick, snatching him up, and kissing him on the black
patch above his right eye. 'Did ums was, Binks? Did that ugly Nilghai
turn you off the sofa? Bite him, Mr. Binkie.' He pitched him on the
Nilghai's stomach, as the big man lay at ease, and Binkie pretended to
destroy the Nilghai inch by inch, till a sofa cushion extinguished him, and
panting he stuck out his tongue at the company.

'The Binkie-boy went for a walk this morning before you were up, Torp.

I saw him making love to the butcher at the corner when the shutters
were being taken down--just as if he hadn't enough to eat in his own
proper house,' said