"Perhaps there is some way the Plane might let me. It's been very generous in other respects. I say, Captain, Oliver could see it when I passed him the Brandy Alexander. Would you like to see the water lilies with me?"

If one asks him how he came to ask this, he will not have much of an answer, except perhaps that he must go to see the water lilies as he is just inclined that way presently. It is one of his inexplicable imperatives, and it is delivered with wide-eyed smiling honesty that has never been aware of its own foibles except through third-party reports.