17* A MODERN COMEDY
some of your complacency—you Chinese atom ! " Ting-a-
ling turned up his boot-buttons. " When you have been
civilised as long as I," they seemed to say: " In the
meantime, scratch my chest."
And scrattling in that yellow fur Michael thought : c Pull
yourself together! Man at the South Pole with the first
blizzard doesn't sing : " Want to go home ! Want to go
home ! "—he sticks it. Come, get going ! * He placed
Ting-a-ling on the floor, and made for his study. Here
were manuscripts, of which the readers to Danby and Winter
had already said : " No money in this, but a genuine piece
of work meriting consideration." It was Michael's business
to give the consideration ; Danby's to turn the affair down
with the words : " Write him (or her) a civil letter, say we
were greatly interested, regret we do not see our way—
hope to have the privilege of considering next effort, and so
forth. What!"
He turned up his reading-lamp and pulled out a manu-
script he had already begun.
" No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or die who
have no retreat;
No retreat, no retreat; they must conquer or die who
have no retreat ! "
The black footmen's refrain from/ Polly' was all that
happened in his mind. Dash it! He must read the thing !
Somehow he finished the chapter. He remembered now.
The manuscript was all about a man who, when he was a
boy, had been so greatly impressed by the sight of a maid-
servant changing her clothes in a room over the way, that
his married life was a continual struggle not to be unfaithful
with his wife's maids. They had just discovered his com-
plex, and he was going to have it out. The rest of the manu-
script no doubt would show how that was done. It went
most conscientiously into all those precise bodily details