"I give him credit for any amount of admiration for my little arrangements. I got out a little tripod spirit lamp with a copper-kettle that Rosa had given me; he was delighted. ''Pon my soul, Charley, you're an ingenious devil! Fancy you living here all so snug and I knowing nothing about it! Like Noah in his Ark, 'pon my soul.' When he began to lather he kept up a running fire of remarks, mostly insulting. 'And what are you here, old man? Admiral? Lord High Muck-a-Muck? They put you up a jolly sight better than they did me in the second cabin of that infernal liner I came over in. Heavens! Old Uncle Christopher wanted me to go to New Zealand. He was cracked about New Zealand; dippy, 'pon my soul. When I asked to see the manager of the affair, you know, the Skipper, they showed me an underbred brass-bound official called a _Purser_, who said he'd put me in irons if I wasn't civil. Oh, this world has some bounders in it, Charley, my boy. What do you get here, Charley? Pretty good screw, I suppose?' And so he ran on. When he had finished spilling the talcum powder all over the floor, using my brushes for his hair, he turned round and looked over the provisions. "'Frank,' I said, 'when you've had something to eat and drink, I'll have a talk with you.' 'With pleasure, my dear chap,' says he. 'But what a meal! Mutton and sandwiches, cake and whisky. Is this your usual feed, Charley, may I ask? No wonder you look dyspeptic.' 'We're out of pheasant,' I said. He looks at me and bursts out laughing. 'Charley, my boy, I wonder how much you really will stand.' 'I'll tell you presently,' I said, and went on smoking. "Dyspepsia didn't scare him much. He went across my dumb-waiter, eating every crumb, drinking every drop of the whisky and soda. Then he took a cigar, snipped it in his big teeth and held out his hand for a match. And then--he was sitting on my red plush settee, while I was in my arm chair--he swung his feet up and lay back on the cushions, puffing the smoke up in great clouds. 'Quite a reader!' he says, waving his cigar towards my book-case. 'You were always a chap for worming.' "'Frank,' I said, 'we've a long account to settle. Somehow or other we've always been antagonistic. Why?' "'How do you mean?' he says. "'What have I done to you, that you should be always turning up and queering my pitch?' "'Oh, you mean Gladys,' he says laughing. 'No,' I said, 'I don't mean Gladys particularly. I mean everything. Every time we come together you do me a bad turn.' "'How can I do you a bad turn now?' he inquires blandly. 'I don't know,' I said, 'I don't know.' "'I can tell you how you can do me a good turn, old man,' he says, sitting up. 'Can't you get me a billet, here? Just to get home, you know.' "'We don't go home,' I said. 'We're on a time charter between here and Genoa.' 'Oh, that'll do,' he says. 'I can go home from there easily enough.' "'I can give you a fireman's job,' I said, 'or a greaser's.'