I started a guessing-competition just now, and our Commanding
Officer won't play. Turn up the reference, Polky--Ecclesiastes
something-or-other. It runs: 'We are become as a skittle-alley in a
garden of cucumbers, forasmuch as our centurion will not come out to
play with us.'"
Otway laughed. "And it goes on that the grasshopper is a
burden. . . . But Y.-S. has given you the name, just now."
"_I_, sir?" Yarrell-Smith gazed, in the more astonishment to find
that Otway, after his laugh, reaching up to trim the lamp, looked
strangely serious. "I'm blest if I understand a word of all
this. . . . What name, sir?"
"_Hate_," said Otway, dropping back into his chair and drawing
at his pipe. "But you're warm; as they say in the nursery-game.
Try '_Foe_,' if you prefer it."
"Oh, I see," protested Yarrell-Smith, after a bewildered look around.
"You've all agreed to be funny with a poor orphan that has just come
in from the cold."
Barham paid no heed to this. "'Foe' might be the name of a man.
It's unusual. . . . But what was the Johnny called who wrote
_Robinson Crusoe?_"
"It _was_ the name of a man," answered Otway.
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