Peter looked meditative and stitched.  “Old Fitz,” he murmured, “is one of the best.  A real sportsman....  Don’t, Elmslie; I didn’t think of that, I heard Childers say it.  Childers also said, ’By Jove, old Fitz knocks spots out of ’em every time,’ but I don’t know what he meant.  I’m trying to learn to talk like Childers.  When I can do that, I shall buy a tie-pin like Fitzmaurice’s, only mine will be paste.  Streater’s is paste; he’s another nice man.”

“He certainly is.  In fact, Margery, you really are not particular enough about the company you keep.  You shun neither the over-bred nor the under-bred.  Personally I affect neither, because they don’t amuse me.  You embrace both.”

“Yes,” Peter mildly agreed.  “But I don’t embrace Streater, you know.  I draw the line at Streater.  Everyone draws the line at Streater; he’s of the baser sort, like his tie-pins.  Wouldn’t it be vexing to have people always drawing lines at you.  There’d be nothing you could well do, except to draw one at them, and they wouldn’t notice yours, probably, if they’d got theirs in first.  You could only sneer.  One can always sneer.  I sneered to-day.”

“You can’t sneer,” Elmslie told him brutally; “and you can’t draw lines; and what on earth you hang about with so many different sorts of idiots for I don’t know....  I think, if circumstances absolutely compelled me to make bosom friends of either, I should choose the under-bred poor rather than the over-bred rich.  That’s the sort of man I’ve no use for.  The sort of man with so much money that he has to chuck it all about the place to get rid of it.  The sort of man who talks to you about beagles.  The sort of man who has a different fancy waistcoat for each day of the week.”

“Well,” said Peter, “that’s nice.  I wish I had.”

His friend turned a grave regard on him.  “The sort of man who rides a motor-bicycle....  You really should, Margery,” he went on, “learn to be more fastidious.  You mustn’t let yourself be either dazzled by fancy waistcoats or sympathetically moved by unclean collars.  Neither is interesting.”

“I never said they were,” Peter said.  “It’s the people inside them....”

Peter, in brief, was a lover of his kind, and the music life played to him was of a varied and complex nature.  But, looking back, it was easy to see how there had been, running through all the variations, a dominant motive in the piece.

As Peter listened to the boiling of his egg, and thought how hard it would be when he took it off, the dominant motive came in and stood by the fire, and looked down on Peter.  He jingled things in his pockets and swayed to and fro on his heels like his uncle Evelyn, and he was slim in build, and fair and pale and clear-cut of face, and gentle and rather indifferent in manner, and soft and casual in voice, and he was in his fourth year, and life went extremely well with him.

“It boils,” he told Peter, of the egg.