"Nor I," said his friend, briskly. "Especially when you have the cash to take you out of town as often as you like, and whenever you like, while I have to wait on the tender mercies of publishers and editors before I can put fifty pounds in my pocket and go for a holiday."
"You're in luck just now, then, I am to understand?"
"Very much so. Look at that, my boy." And he flourished a piece of thin paper in Vivian's face. "A cheque for a hundred. I am going to squander it on railway lines as soon as possible."
"You are going to join your family?"
"Yes, I am going to join my family. What a sweetly domestic sound! I don't care a rap for my family. I am going to see the woman I love best in the world, and, if she were not in Italy, I doubt whether wild horses would ever draw me from this vast, tumultuous, smoky, beloved city of mine—Alma Mater, indeed, to me, and to scores of men who are your brothers and mine——"
"Now, look here, Percival," said Rupert, in a slightly wearied tone, "if you are going to rant and rave, I'll go out. My room is quite at your disposal, but I am not. I've got a headache. Why don't you go to a theatre or a music hall, and work off your superfluous energy there by clapping and shouting applause?"
Percival laughed, but seated himself and spoke in a gentler tone.
"I'll remember your susceptibilities, my friend. Let me stay and smoke, that's all. Throw a book at my head if I grow too noisy. Or hand me that 'Review' at your elbow. I'll read it and hold my tongue."
He was as good as his word. He read so long and so quietly that Vivian turned his head at last and addressed him of his own accord.
"What makes your people stay so long abroad?" he said. "Are they going to stop there all the summer? I never heard that a summer in Italy was a desirable thing."