“Oh, simply that there’s no rhyme for it. I thought about it all the time I was dressing⁠—it’s dreadfully bad for one to think whilst one’s dressing⁠—and all lunchtime, and I’m still hung up over it. I feel like those unfortunate automobilists who achieve an unenviable motoriety by coming to a hopeless stop with their cars in the most crowded thoroughfares. I’m afraid I shall have to drop the aasvogel, and it did give such lovely local colour to the thing.”

“Still you’ve got the heedless hartebeest.”

“And quite a decorative bit of moral admonition⁠—when you’ve worried the meaning out⁠—

‘Cease, War, thy bubbling madness that the wine shares,

And bid thy legions turn their swords to mine shares.’