“Oh, I don't see any resemblance between Aubrey and his father,” the rector dissented. “Old Aubrey Todmarsh was a thoroughly self-indulgent man. I don't believe he ever gave a thought to anyone else in the world. Now Aubrey with his visions and his dreams——”
“Which he does his best to get other people to pay for,” the solicitor interposed. “No use. You won't get me to enthuse over Aubrey, James. I remember him too well as a boy—a selfish, self-seeking little beast.”
“Yes, I was not fond of him as a child. But I believe it to be a case of genuine conversion. He spends himself and his little patrimony for others. Next week he goes to Geneva, he tells me, to attend a sitting of the League of Nations, to explain the workings of——”
“Damn the League of Nations!” uttered the solicitor, banging his fist upon his writing-pad with an energy that rattled his inkstand. “I beg your pardon, James. Not but what it went out of fashion to apologize to parsons for swearing in the War. Most of them do it themselves nowadays—eh, what?” with a chuckle at his own wit that threatened to choke him.
The rector did not smile.
“I look upon the League of Nations as our great hope for the future.”
“Do you? I don't,” contradicted his brother-in-law flatly. “I look to a largely augmented Air Force with plenty of practice in bomb-throwing as my hope for the future. It will be worth fifty of that rotten League of Nations. Aubrey Todmarsh addressing the League of Nations! It makes me sick. I suppose they will knight him next. No, no more of that, please, James. When I think of the League of Nations I get excited and that is bad for my heart. But now to business. You say you want money for Tony—how do you propose to get it? I should say you have exhausted all ways of doing it by now.”
“How about a further mortgage on my little farm at Halvers?”
The solicitor shook his head.
“No use thinking of it. Farm is mortgaged up to the hilt already—rather past it, in fact.”