And now at latest
it will also be seen why this story has been told with undue and
inexcusable gusto; there is none other like it for me to tell; it
is my one ewe-lamb in all these annals. But Raffles had a ruder
name for it.
"It was the Apotheosis of the Bunny," said he, but in a tone I
never shall forget.
"I hardly knew what I was doing or saying," I said. "The whole
thing was a fluke."
"Then," said Raffles, "it was the kind of fluke I always trusted
you to make when runs were wanted."
And he held out his dear old hand.
THE KNEES OF THE GODS
I
"The worst of this war," said Raffles, "is the way it puts a
fellow off his work."
It was, of course, the winter before last, and we had done
nothing dreadful since the early autumn. Undoubtedly the war was
the cause. Not that we were among the earlier victims of the
fever. I took disgracefully little interest in the
Negotiations, while the Ultimatum appealed to Raffles as a
sporting flutter. Then we gave the whole thing till Christmas.
We still missed the cricket in the papers. But one russet
afternoon we were in Richmond, and a terrible type was shouting
himself hoarse with "'Eavy British lorsses--orful slorter o' the
Bo-wers! Orful slorter! Orful slorter! 'Eavy British
lorsses!" I thought the terrible type had invented it, but
Raffles gave him more than he asked, and then I held the bicycle
while he tried to pronounce Eland's Laagte.
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