"I might have saved you the trouble. I'm going to see him myself."
"You," I italicised. It struck me as phenomenal and rather absurd that everybody that I came across should, in some way or other, be mixed up with this portentous philanthropist. It was as if a fisherman were drawing in a ground line baited with hundreds of hooks. He had a little offended air.
"He, or, I should say, a number of people interested in a philanthropic society, have asked me to go to Greenland."
"Do they want to get rid of you?" I asked, flippantly. I was made to know my place.
"My dear fellow," Callan said, in his most deliberate, most Olympian tone. "I believe you're entirely mistaken, I believe . . . I've been informed that the Système Groënlandais is one of the healthiest places in the Polar regions. There are interested persons who . . ."
"So I've heard," I interrupted, "but I can assure you I've heard nothing but good of the Système and the . . . and its philanthropists. I meant nothing against them. I was only astonished that you should go to such a place."
[137]
