Two men stood in the billiard-room of an old country
house, talking. Play, which had been of a half-hearted
nature, was over, and they sat at the open window,
looking out over the park stretching away beneath them,
conversing idly.
“Your time’s nearly up, Jem,” said
one at length, “this time six weeks you’ll
be yawning out the honeymoon and cursing the man—woman
I mean— who invented them.”
Jem Benson stretched his long limbs in the chair and
grunted in dissent.
“I’ve never understood it,” continued
Wilfred Carr, yawning. “It’s not
in my line at all; I never had enough money for my
own wants, let alone for two. Perhaps if I were
as rich as you or Croesus I might regard it differently.”
There was just sufficient meaning in the latter part
of the remark for his cousin to forbear to reply to
it. He continued to gaze out of the window and
to smoke slowly.
“Not being as rich as Croesus—or
you,” resumed Carr, regarding him from beneath
lowered lids, “I paddle my own canoe down the
stream of Time, and, tying it to my friends’
door-posts, go in to eat their dinners.”
“Quite Venetian,” said Jem Benson, still
looking out of the window. “It’s
not a bad thing for you, Wilfred, that you have the
doorposts and dinners—and friends.”
Carr grunted in his turn. “Seriously though,
Jem,” he said, slowly, “you’re a
lucky fellow, a very lucky fellow. If there is
a better girl above ground than Olive, I should like
to see her.”
“Yes,” said the other, quietly.
“She’s such an exceptional girl,”
continued Carr, staring out of the window. “She’s
so good and gentle. She thinks you are a bundle
of all the virtues.”
He laughed frankly and joyously, but the other man
did not join him. “Strong sense—of
right and wrong, though,” continued Carr, musingly.
“Do you know, I believe that if she found out
that you were not——”
“Not what?” demanded Benson, turning upon
him fiercely, “Not what?”
“Everything that you are,” returned his
cousin, with a grin that belied his words, “I
believe she’d drop you.”
“Talk about something else,” said Benson,
slowly; “your pleasantries are not always in
the best taste.”
Wilfred Carr rose and taking a cue from the rack,
bent over the board and practiced one or two favourite
shots. “The only other subject I can talk
about just at present is my own financial affairs,”
he said slowly, as he walked round the table.
“Talk about something else,” said Benson
again, bluntly.
“And the two things are connected,” said
Carr, and dropping his cue he half sat on the table
and eyed his cousin.
There was a long silence. Benson pitched the
end of his cigar out of the window, and leaning back
closed his eyes.
“Do you follow me?” inquired Carr at
length.
Benson opened his eyes and nodded at the window.
