It was
no wonder I was in a funk for a minute. I'll bet a fiver the others
were, too, if they'll only own up to it. I don't mean for long, but
just when the idea first laid hold of them. Anyway, it was a good
lesson to me, and if I catch myself thinking of it again I'll whistle,
or talk to myself out loud and think of something cheerful. And I
don't mean to be one of those chaps who spends his time in jail
counting the stones in his cell, or training spiders, or measuring how
many of his steps make a mile, for madness lies that way. I mean to
sit tight and think of all the good times I've had, and go over them
in my mind very slowly, so as to make them last longer and remember
who was there and what we said, and the jokes and all that; I'll go
over house-parties I have been on, and the times I've had in the
Riviera, and scouting-parties Dr. Jim led up country when we were
taking Matabele Land.
"They say that if you're good here they give you things to read after
a month or two, and then I can read up all those instructive books
that a fellow never does read until he's laid up in bed.
"But that's crowding ahead a bit; I must keep to what happened to-day.
We struck York Road at the back of the Great Western Terminus, and I
half hoped we might see some chap we knew coming or going away: I
would like to have waved my hand to him. It would have been fun to
have seen his surprise the next morning when he read in the paper that
he had been bowing to jail-birds, and then I would like to have
cheated the tipstaves out of just one more friendly good-by.
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