No More Learning

What earthly need have you for money? "

"It's there, bless its golden heart," said Dick. "It's there all the
time. Providence has sent me nuts while I have teeth to crack 'em with.
I haven't yet found the nut I wish to crack, but I'm keeping my teeth
filed. Perhaps some day you and I will go for a walk round the wide
earth. "

"With no work to do, nobody to worry us, and nobody to compete with? You
would be unfit to speak to in a week. Besides, I shouldn't go. I don't
care to profit by the price of a man's soul,--for that's what it would
mean. Dick, it's no use arguing. You're a fool. "

"Don't see it. When I was on that Chinese pig-boat, our captain got
credit for saving about twenty-five thousand very seasick little pigs,
when our old tramp of a steamer fell foul of a timber-junk. Now, taking
those pigs as a parallel----"

"Oh, confound your parallels!
Whenever I try to improve your soul, you
always drag in some anecdote from your very shady past. Pigs aren't the
British public; and self-respect is self-respect the world over. Go
out for a walk and try to catch some self-respect. And, I say, if the
Nilghai comes up this evening can I show him your diggings? "

"Surely. " And Dick departed, to take counsel with himself in the rapidly
gathering London fog.

Half an hour after he had left, the Nilghai laboured up the staircase.
He was the chiefest, as he was the youngest, of the war correspondents,
and his experiences dated from the birth of the needle-gun. Saving only
his ally, Keneu the Great War Eagle, there was no man higher in the
craft than he, and he always opened his conversation with the news that
there would be trouble in the Balkans in the spring. Torpenhow laughed
as he entered.

"Never mind the trouble in the Balkans. Those little states are always
screeching. You've heard about Dick's luck? "

"Yes; he has been called up to notoriety, hasn't he? I hope you keep him
properly humble. He wants suppressing from time to time.