"Tell me if I walk too quickly for you," I said. His hurt was to his right ankle, and his stick left a trail of little round holes in the turf.
"Oh, that's all right, thanks, sir," he said cheerfully, pegging away; and he added with a chuckle, "I say, between you and I, old Philip was rather in a paddy, wasn't he?"
"Between you and me he was," I said. I corrected him quite deliberately. Now that the failure of the sparking-plug had put this opportunity into my hands I was determined at all costs to know more of him. Hence my--well _grossièreté_. But he noticed nothing. Instead he broke out with a feigned enthusiasm.
"I say, these pipes are turning out jolly well! Lovely bit of straight grain this one! You do know how to choose a pipe, sir! Are they French or Italian briar?"
"Cool as a nut. Joan's quite right about my smoking too many cigarettes. They're all right for the street--I hate to see a fellow smoking a pipe in the street--and gaspers smell a bit sickly to other people sometimes, don't you think?"
"I suppose the _Specter_ hasn't turned up yet?" was his next effort, as he sat down to rest for a minute.
"I do hope it isn't out of print. How soon does a book go out of print, sir--on an average?"
Weakly I thought of "Why does the razorbill razorbill?" and, I am afraid, found nothing to reply....
Then, as he continued to babble laboriously across the gulf that separated us, I remembered again certain tubular parcels that arrived for him by post, which, when stripped of their wrappings, turned out to contain the _Transactions_ and _Proceedings_ of this Society or that. Seeing these left lying about I had peeped into them, and had been brought up standing against such intimidating fences as the following:--
"_Aerofoil Sections in relation to Speed Range._"
"_Influence of Wave-friction on Aerodynamic Resistances._"
My simple literary mind faints in regions such as these. His presumably did not. This apparently was his ordinary reading, the _Specter_ his relaxation.
"--amber beads," the words came across the void that separated soul from soul. "Just the shade I meant--neither too yellow nor too brown--I'm afraid it took up an awful lot of your time----"
"What," I said, looking steadily at him, "is the Influence of Wind-friction on Aerodynamic Resistance?"