“Hear, hear,” agreed the Showman surprisingly, rattling his glass. “Well put, old cock. But these ain’t actors; only puppets. You can’t be wicked in wood.”
“I’m afraid I must be off,” said Will, rising.
“Then here’s luck to you.” He finished his glass. “And may you die before you’re buried!”
“Thanks, I hope I shan’t do either, Mr. Duke.” He took his hat and stick.
“Not Duke, old man. Flippance, Anthony Flippance, universally docked to Tony Flip. Duke only goes with the Marionettes. I bought ’em lock, stock, and barrel—-the oldest circuit in East Anglia, and the name going well with the crowned heads.”
“But there are no crowned heads in America,” said Will, smiling.
“Pardon me, sonny,” contradicted Mr. Flippance.
“But I’ve just come from there,” said Will crushingly.
“Oh!” said Will blankly. He seemed really to have heard of this personage. Then recovering, he said: “But have you played before him?”
“That’s not my affair,” said Mr. Flippance. “It ain’t my responsibility what Duke’s done or left undone—if Duke was his name, which I take leave to question. ’Twixt you and I, I doubt if it would pay to work Brazil. But, as I said, I bought it as a going concern, lock, stock——”
Mr. Flippance turned his large red face benevolently towards the moleskins.
“Lies is a harsh word. Legends, old cock, legends.”
“Oi bain’t a bird,” rasped the Deacon. “Stick to the truth.”
“Lord love us, a Quaker!” Mr. Flippance winked at Will, who smiled—man of the world to man of the world. “As if anybody would take a thing that size and smell for a rooster!”
The Deacon reached for the rum-bottle in deadly silence. Will, with a fear—soon proved superfluous—that he meant it for a missile, hastened to remark that anyhow there were no crowned heads in Australia.
“Where were you educated, sonny?” retorted Mr. Flippance. And he began whistling the then favourite air: “The King of the Cannibal Islands.” He broke off to point out that kings and queens were as thick in the man-eating islands round Australia as old cocks in Essex, though they didn’t wear moleskins, or indeed anything but their own skins. Besides, he added as an afterthought, wasn’t Queen Victoria monarch of Australia too?
Will, taken aback again, had to admit it. “But you haven’t played before Victoria?” he murmured.