Chapter 23

⁠​​​‌​​​​​‌​​​‌‌​​​​‌‌‌‌​​​​‌‌​​​​​​​‌‌‌​​‌​​​​‌‌‌​​​‌‌​‌​​​​​‌‌​⁠“Oh, more or less.” I fancy my smile was pale. “Not absolutely. We shouldn’t like that!” I went on.

“No—I suppose we shouldn’t. Of course we have the others.”

“We have the others—we have indeed the others,” I concurred.

“Yet even though we have them,” he returned, still with his hands in his pockets and planted there in front of me, “they don’t much count, do they?”

I made the best of it, but I felt w