Part 20 (1/2)
”That's better. Well, Toby, I want you--I really want you--to have a real profession. What is the use of your being secretary to your cousin?
I don't believe you could say the names of the men in the Cabinet, and, as you once told me yourself, all you ever do there is to play stump-cricket in the secretary's room.”
”You should have warned me that whatever I said would be used against me,” said the injured Toby. ”But I saw after the flowers in Hyde Park last year.”
”The work of a life-time,” said Lily. ”I wonder they don't offer you a peerage.”
”You see, I'm not a brewer,” said Toby.
”Beer, beerage--a very poor joke, Toby.”
”Very poor, and who made it? Besides, I think you are being sarcastic about the flowers in Hyde Park. If there's one thing I hate,” said Toby violently, ”it is cheap sarcasm.”
”Who wouldn't be sarcastic when a great tousle-headed, able-bodied, freckle-faced scion of the aristocracy tells one that he is employed--employed, mark you--in looking after the flowers in Hyde Park?” asked Lily, with some warmth. ”Why, you didn't even water them!”
”I did the organization, the head work of the thing,” said Toby. ”That's the rub.”
”Bos.h.!.+”
”Lily, you are really very vulgar and common in your language sometimes,” said Toby. ”I have often meant to speak to you about it; it makes me very unhappy.”
”Indeed! Try and cheer up. But really, Toby, and quite seriously, I wish you would settle to do something; I don't care what. Go into the Foreign Office.”
”Languages,” said Toby; ”I don't know any.”
”Or some other office, or buy a farm, and work it properly, and try to make it pay. Give your mind seriously to something. I hate a loafer.
Besides, a profession seems to me the greatest luxury in the world.”
”Plain folk like me don't care for luxuries,” said Toby. ”I'm not like Kit. Kit is perfectly happy without the necessaries of life, provided she has the luxuries.”
This diversion was more successful. Lily was silent a moment.
”Toby, I'm afraid I don't like your sister-in-law,” she said at length.
Toby plunged with fervour into the new topic.
”Oh, there you make a great mistake,” he said. ”I allow Kit is not exactly a copy-book-virtue person, but--well, she's clever and amusing, and she is never a bore.”
”I don't trust her.”
”There, again, you make a mistake. I don't say that everybody should trust her, but I am sure she would never do a shabby thing to you or me, or----”
”Or?” said Lily, with the straightforwardness which Kit labelled ”uncomfortable.”
”Or anybody she really liked,” said Toby. ”Besides, Lily, I owe her something; she brought us together. As I have told you, she simply insisted on introducing me, though I didn't want to be introduced at all.”
Lily made the sound which is usually written ”pshaw!”
”As if we shouldn't have met!” she said. ”Toby, our meeting was in better hands than hers.”
”Well, she hurried the better hands up,” said Toby, ”and I am grateful for that. If it had not been for her, we should not have been introduced at that dance at the Hungarians, and I shouldn't probably have dined at Park Lane the night after; I should have gone to the Palace instead, so there would have been one, perhaps two, evenings wasted.”