“Never further West than the Marble Arch.  But a friend of mine kept a ranch somewhere down there.  One day he shot a skunk.  Yes, Mr. White, a skunk.”

“A skunk?  I’m blowed.  What on earth ever for did he do that?  What did he want with a skunk?  I thought they were protected by law to keep down rattlesnakes.  That’s so, isn’t it, Charlie?”

“Snakes.  You should see them in Trinidad.  Snakes.  Great Scot!  It’s a queer place, is Trinidad.  All angles and things—­”

“I don’t think one can talk about a place being all angles and things, unless—­”

“Tell me, Charlie, what did the fellow on the ranch want to do with that rattlesnake?”

“Couldn’t say, my son.  Maybe he thought of sending it to his mother.  Or perhaps he didn’t want the skunk to get hold of its tail:  see?”

“I see.”

“They’re very sensitive about their tails.  As ticklish as any young girl, I’m told.”

“As bad as all that, are they?”

“I don’t think one can talk about angles when describing an island or even a continent, except in a figurative and flowery fashion.  As a teacher of geometry, it is my business to dwell among angles; and the thirty-five boys in my class will bear witness to the fact that my relations with angles, great and small, are above reproach.  I admit that there are angles everywhere, and that a man who really likes their company will stumble against them in the most unexpected places.  But they are sometimes hard to see, unless one deliberately looks for them.  I think Charlie must have been looking for them in Trinidad.”

“I said angles and things, and I always stick to what I say.  And things.  You will be good enough, Mr. Professor, to draw your map accordingly.”

“Gentlemen!  I rise to a point of order.  Our Indian friend here is greatly annoyed.  He has been accused of wearing stays.  At his urgent request I have convinced myself, by personal inspection, that he wears nothing of the kind.  He is naturally slim-waisted, as befits a worthy representative of the noble Hairyan race.  It has also been suggested that he loses caste by his present mode of conduct.  He begs me to say that, being a Jamshi-worshipper, he doesn’t care a brass farthing about caste.  Thirdly, he has been blamed in certain quarters for his immoderate indulgence in Parker’s poison.  Let me tell you, gentlemen, in my capacity as Vice-President, that for the last four thousand years his family has enjoyed a special dispensation from the Great Mogul, authorizing the eldest son to drink whatever he damn well pleases.  Our friend here happens to be the third son.  But that is obviously not his fault.  If it were, he would have come forward with an apology long ago.  Gentlemen!  I can’t speak fairer than that.  Whoever says I’m not a gentleman—­why, he isn’t one either.”

“Hear, hear!  I never knew you were an ornithologist, Richards.”