“ ‘Yes, me then,’ ses the whale.

“ ‘Another word from you,’ ses the whale, ‘an’ I’ll put you where Napoleon put the oysters.’

“ ‘Well,’ ses the grasshopper, ‘there’s no doubt but vanity, ignorance, and ambition are three wonderful things, an’ you have them all.’

“ ‘Neither you, nor Napoleon, nor the Kaiser himself an’ his hundred million men could do hurt or harm to me. You could have every soldier in the German Army, the French Army, an’ the Salvation Army lookin’ for me an’ I’d put the comether on them all.”

“ ‘I can’t stand this any longer,’ ses the whale, an’ then and there he hits the rock a whack of his tail an’ when I went to look for the grasshopper, there he was sitting on the whale’s nose as happy an’ contented as if nothing happened. An’ when he jumped back to the rock again he says: ‘A little exercise when ’tis tempered with discretion never does any harm, but violent exertion is a very foolish thing if you value your health. But it is only people who have no sinse but think they have it all who make such errors.’

“ ‘If I could get a hold of you,’ ses the whale, ‘I’d knock some of the pride out of you.’

“ ‘That would be an ungentlemanly way of displaying your displeasure,’ ses the grasshopper.

“ ‘I’d scorn,’ ses he, ‘to use violent means with you, or do you physical injury of any kind. All you want is self-control and a little education. You should know that quantity without quality isn’t as good as quality without quantity.’

“ ‘Sure ’tis I’m the fool to be wasting me time listening to the likes of you,’ ses the whale. ‘If any of me family saw me now, I’d never hear the end of it.’

“ ‘Indeed,’ ses the grasshopper, ‘no one belonging to me would ever recognise me ever again if they thought I was trying to make a whale behave himself. There would be some excuse for one of my attainments feeling proud. But as for you!—’

“ ‘An’ what in the name of nonsense can you do except give old guff out of you?’

“ ‘I haven’t time to tell you all,’ ses the grasshopper. ‘But to commence with, I can travel all over the world an’ have the use of trains, steamers, sailing ships and automobiles and will never be asked to pay a cent, an’ I can live on dry land all me life if I choose, while you can’t live under water, or over water, on land or on sea, and while all the king’s horses and the all king’s men couldn’t catch me if they were trying till the crack of doom, you could be caught be a few poor, harmless sailors, who wouldn’t know a crow from a cormorant, and who’d sell your carcass to make oil for foolish wives to burn an’ write letters to other people’s husbands an’ fill the world with trouble.’

“ ‘An’ what about all the whalebone we supplies for ladies’ corsets an’ paper knives, and what about all the stories we make for the novelists an’ the moving pictures an’—’

“We’re at the Sprig of Holly now,” said Felix. “Is it a pint of porter or a bottle you’ll have?”

“I’ll have a pint, I think,” said Standish.