"Good Lord!" cried Jaffery. "I should think I have. I've got about three hundred stuffed head of game stored in the London Repository, to say nothing of skins and as fine a collection of modern weapons as you ever saw. I could furnish a place in slap-up style to-morrow." "But have you a chest of drawers or a pillow slip or a book or a dinner plate or a fork?" "Thousands, my dear," said Jaffery. "They're waiting to be called for in all the shops of London." He laughed his great laugh at Barbara's momentary discomfiture. I laughed too, for he had scored a point. When a man has, say, a thousand pounds wherewith to buy that much money's worth of household clutter, he certainly is that household clutter's potential owner. Between us we developed this incontrovertible proposition. "Then why," said Barbara, "don't you go at once to Harrod's Stores and purchase a comfortable home?" "Because, my dear Barbara," said Jaffery, "I'm starting off for the interior of China the day after to-morrow." "China?" echoed Barbara vaguely. "The interior of China?" I reëchoed, with masculine definiteness. "Why not? It isn't in Neptune or Uranus. You wouldn't go into hysterics if I said I was going to Boulogne. Let him come with me, Barbara. It would do him a thundering lot of good." At this very faintly humorous proposal he laughed immoderately. I need not say that I declined it. I should be as happy in the interior of China as on an Albanian mountain. I asked him how long he would be away. "A year or two," he replied casually. "It must be a queer thing," said I, "to be born with no conception of time and space." "A couple of years pass pretty quick," said Jaffery. "So does a lifetime," said I. Well, this was just like Jaffery. No sooner home amid the amenities of civilisation than the wander-fever seizes him again. In vain he pleaded his job, the valuable copy he would send to his paper. I proved to him it was but the mere lust of savagery. And he could not understand why we should be startled by the announcement that within forty-eight hours he would be on his way to lose himself for a couple of years in Crim Tartary. "Suppose I sprang a thing like that on you," said I. "Suppose I told you I was starting to-morrow morning for the South Pole. What would you say?" "I should say you were a liar. Ho! ho! ho!" In his mirth he rubbed his hands and feet together like a colossal fly. The joke lasted him for the rest of the evening.