Captain Strogue had been sponged and darned and brushed and polished up--so far as he was capable of polish--by skilful and tender hands, and was sitting in a brown arm-chair, as bolt upright as if his ribs had thickened, as a barn-floor does, by the flail of many heels upon them. "Keep 'em like that," he said, "for about two hours, and fill up well inside, and it stands to reason that they must come right--can't help themselves. Doctors? None of them for Bat Strogue. The only doctor I ever knew was any good is down your way now, a queer German cove. Say grace for me, and carve for me, and fall to, my son. Take me for your guest; and you might have a more squeamish one." CHAPTER XL TWAIN MORE THAN TWIN In spite of all anxiety, it was impossible to be anxious for the moment, in the company of this extraordinary fellow. Doubt is the most hostile and hateful element to all human pleasure; and doubt was at once kicked out from the society of Captain Strogue. Certainty stood in its place, as firm as--well, I might say as firm as Strogue's own nose, for I can think of nothing firmer. Short and thick and straight it was, like a buttress to support his bulky forehead, and keep his bright and defiant eyes from glaring into one another; for they had a little cast towards it. Certainty also in the strongest point of all--that whoever you might be, or wherever you had been, never till now had you come into contact--or collision, if you liked that sort of thing--with a member of your race so far above all little weakness, and yet so ready to participate in it, if you would pay the bill for him, as your new but true friend, Bartholomew Strogue. "Imar is an exceedingly fine chap," he said, as he lit a long clay pipe, after a dinner which impressed me with the truth that the more a man sees the more he feeds; "you are too young, friend Cranleigh, to have any powers of reflection. But you may take it from me, that there are only two ways now of being fit to consider yourself a fine chap. Of course I don't talk of nincompoops, who think themselves wonderful always. What I mean is in common-sense; and there you can only be above the ruck, by despising the human race, as I do; or loving it, as Imar does. I have found nothing in them to admire, though I have seen the inner side of many celebrated men; and as for loving them--well, I suppose the Lord puts that into you, and bungs up your eyes. The man who can do it is the happiest of his race, and a great deal too good to be left among them. No fool can do it; for a fool always goes by facts." "Sûr Imar is the largest-minded man I ever knew," I broke in upon Strogue with some indignation. "He looks at the best side, as all good people do. He likes human nature, because he judges by himself."