"I agree with you."
"I wish you wouldn't. I've a sweet temper, but I can't stand being
agreed with. And I'm so worried about the aasvogel."
Reginald stared dismally at the biscuit-tin, which now presented an
unattractive array of rejected cracknels.
"I believe," he murmured, "if I could find a woman with an unsatisfied
craving for cracknels, I should marry her."
"What is the tragedy of the aasvogel?" asked the Other sympathetically.
"Oh, simply that there's no rhyme for it. I thought about it all the
time I was dressing--it's dreadfully bad for one to think whilst one's
dressing--and all lunch-time, and I'm still hung up over it. I feel like
those unfortunate automobilists who achieve an unenviable motoriety by
coming to a hopeless stop with their cars in the most crowded
thoroughfares. I'm afraid I shall have to drop the aasvogel, and it did
give such lovely local colour to the thing."
"Still you've got the heedless hartebeest."
"And quite a decorative bit of moral admonition--when you've worried the
meaning out--
'Cease, War, thy bubbling madness that the wine shares,
And bid thy legions turn their swords to mine shares.'
Mine shares seems to fit the case better than ploughshares. There's lots
more about the blessings of Peace, shall I go on reading it?"
"If I must make a choice, I think I would rather they went on with the
war."