"Well," said I, "as you press me,—I got it in the moon."
"The moon?"
"Yes, the moon in the sky."
"But how do you mean?"
"What I say, confound it!"
"That you have just come from the moon?"
"Exactly! through space—in that ball." And I took a delicious mouthful of egg. I made a private note that when I went back to the moon I would take a box of eggs.
I could see clearly that they did not believe one word of what I told them, but evidently they considered me the most respectable liar they had ever met. They glanced at one another and then concentrated the fire of their eyes on me. I fancy they expected a clue to me in the way I helped myself to salt. They seemed to find something significant in my peppering my egg. Those strangely shaped masses of gold they had staggered under held their minds. There the lumps lay in front of me, each worth thousands of pounds and as impossible for any one to steal as a house or a piece of land. As I looked at their curious faces over my coffee cup I realised something of the enormous wilderness of explanations into which I should have to wander to render myself comprehensible again.
"You don't really mean," began the youngest young man in the tone of one who speaks to an obstinate child.
"Just pass me that toast rack," I said, and shut him up completely.
201
