Like most people he failed to appreciate the real greatness of the clergyman.
Meldon hurried into the house and flung open the door of the study.
Major Kent looked up from his papers with a weary smile.
"Couldn't you and Doyle settle that business of the car cushions between you?
I shall never get these accounts done if I'm interrupted every minute." "We could have settled it," said Meldon.

"In fact we have settled it, but a question of vastly greater importance has arisen.

We are threatened with something like an actual catastrophe." "If it's the kind of catastrophe which involves an hour or so of solid talk, J.J., don't you think you could manage to put it off for a little?
I shall be quite ready to go into it at any length you like this evening after dinner." "Major," said Meldon, "if an earthquake came--the kind of earthquake which knocks down houses--and if thunderbolts were falling red-hot out of the sky, and if a large tidal wave was rushing up across the lawn, and if a moving bog was desolating your kitchen garden and engulfing your polo ponies, would you or would you not sit calmly there and go on with your accounts ?" "If all those things were happening I'd move, of course." "There's no 'of course' about it.

Some men wouldn't." "Nonsense, J.J.

The tidal wave alone--" "Some men," repeated Meldon, "would sit on and finish their accounts.
There was a soldier at Pompeii, for instance--they found his body centuries afterwards--who wouldn't stir from his post even when he saw the molten lava flowing down the street.