“And dead men, and war, and power, and responsibility,” said Cleever, under his breath. “You won't have any sensations left at thirty, if you go on as you have done. But I want to hear more tales--more tales!” He seemed to forget that even subalterns might have engagements of their own. “We're thinking of dining out somewhere--the lot of us--and going on to the Empire afterwards,” said Nevin, with hesitation. He did not like to ask Cleever to come too. The invitation might be regarded as perilously near to “cheek.” And Cleever, anxious not to wag a gray beard unbidden among boys at large, said nothing on his side. Boileau solved the little difficulty by blurting out: “Won't you come too, sir?” Cleever almost shouted “Yes,” and while he was being helped into his coat continued to murmur “Good Heavens!” at intervals in a way that the boys could not understand. “I don't think I've been to the Empire in my life,” said he; “but--what is my life after all? Let us go.” They went out with Eustace Cleever, and I sulked at home because they had come to see me, but had gone over to the better man; which was humiliating. They packed him into a cab with utmost reverence, for was he not the author of “As it was in the Beginning,” and a person in whose company it was an honour to go abroad? From all I gathered later, he had taken less interest in the performance before him than in their conversations, and they protested with emphasis that he was “as good a man as they make; knew what a man was driving at almost before he said it; and yet he's so damned simple about things any man knows.” That was one of many comments. At midnight they returned, announcing that they were “highly respectable gondoliers,” and that oysters and stout were what they chiefly needed. The eminent novelist was still with them, and I think he was calling them by their shorter names. I am certain that he said he had been moving in worlds not realised, and that they had shown him the Empire in a new light. Still sore at recent neglect, I answered shortly, “Thank Heaven we have within the land ten thousand as good as they,” and when he departed, asked him what he thought of things generally. He replied with another quotation, to the effect that though singing was a remarkably fine performance, I was to be quite sure that few lips would be moved to song if they could find a sufficiency of kissing. Whereby I understood that Eustace Cleever, decorator and colourman in words, was blaspheming his own Art, and would be sorry for this in the morning. End of Project Gutenberg's Soldiers Three, Part II., by Rudyard Kipling