The Purification of Mulfera
too morose for profanity during the remainder of that day.
But it was no better when the manager's mood lifted, and the life on Mulfera slipped back into the old blinding and perspiring groove.
Then one night, a night of the very week thus sensationally begun, the ingenious Chaucer began one of the old, old stories, on the moonlit veranda, and Carmichael stopped him while that particular old story was still quite young in the telling. There was an awkward pause until Carmichael laughed.
"I don't care twopence what you fellows think of me," said he, "and never did. I saw a lot of the Bishop," he went on, less aggressively, after a pause.
"So we saw," assented Smart.
"You bet!" added Chaucer.
For they were two to one.
"He ran the mile for Oxford," continued Carmichael. "Two years he ran it—and won both times. You may not appreciate quite what that means."
And, with a patience foreign to his character as they knew it, Carmichael proceeded to explain.
"But," he added, "that was nothing to his performance last Sunday, in getting here from beyond the boundary in the time he did it in—bare-
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