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"I told him no, that such a communication is without weight for me.

"'Then, we need say no more about it,' he said, and: 'May I keep this pleasant missive?' and, on my saying yes, put it inside his watch.

"Then I had quite a pleasant evening with him. Though not exquisite in culture outside, he exhibits considerable shrewdness of wit on things in general, a sound sense, a trained intelligence, and such a storehouse of memories and world-lore as render him really an entertaining person, his lips once unsealed. I found myself liking, admiring, him—so much, that when he expressed a wish to feel what flight is like, I immediately offered to take him into the air, he to come to-morrow to the aerodrome. It is not true that he is a rogue: I know better. Of the anonymous note he said nothing more until the dinner was over, we then smoking 'long Toms,' as he called them, cigar-sticks which he produced out of a tube of leopard-skin, his dress-clothes being constructed with quite a number of pockets apparently; and now he said to me: 'I suppose you couldn't reckon up who it was sent you that pleasant missive?'