he
certainty of cash means to a man who has always wanted it badly.

Nothing will pay me for some of my life's joys; on that Chinese
pig-boat, for instance, when we ate bread and jam for every meal,
because Ho-Wang wouldn't allow us anything better, and it all tasted of
pig,--Chinese pig. I've worked for this, I've sweated and I've starved
for this, line on line and month after month. And now I've got it I am
going to make the most of it while it lasts. Let them pay--they've no
knowledge.'

'What does Your Majesty please to want? You can't smoke more than you
do; you won't drink; you're a gross feeder; and you dress in the dark,
by the look of you. You wouldn't keep a horse the other day when I
suggested, because, you said, it might fall lame, and whenever you cross
the street you take a hansom. Even you are not foolish enough to suppose
that theatres and all the live things you can by thereabouts mean Life.

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 Ea