"Oh! come," said Mrs. Toller, "you're not so old as all that, Mr. Stubbs."
"Not in years perhaps," said Dizzy. "But I assure you that in other things Methuselah was a babe compared with me. I sometimes sit and look at fellows amusing themselves, and I say to myself: 'Well, you are a set o' Jugginses. Call this life! Why, you ought all to be in the nursery!' However, I've only got one more term and the whole thing will be over."
"And what are you going to do when you leave the University?" asked Mrs. Toller. "Are you still thinking of entering the Church?"
"Oh! bless me, no," said Dizzy. "That's off. My old father got a bit frightened, when these Kensit Johnnies began bally-ragging all over the place. He's a far-sighted old fellow. He saw that if I got shoved into a comfortable living and then they went and disestablished it or something, I should get left."
"Have you ever turned your attention to the Nonconformist ministry?" inquired Mrs. Toller.
"No, I can't say I have," replied Dizzy. "Is there much in it?"
"The incomes made by our leading men are superior to anything in the Establishment," said Mrs. Toller. "Our people have been taught to give."
"Have they?" said Dizzy, with interest. "Well now, that's worth knowing. I'll put my old governor on to that. If you hear of a soft thing going, I shall consider it very kind of you if you'll drop me a line. One's got to keep one's eyes skinned to pick up a living now-a-days. We're getting ready for the bar now, to tell you the truth. My old father was dining with a railway fellow down our way, and he told him that they spent I forget how many thousands a year on litigation. My governor's a cute old bird, and he thought it wouldn't be a bad thing if I could pick up a bit of it, so I've been eating dinners at Lincoln's Inn for the last year or so, and previous poor dinners they are too. I don't think I shall take to it much. In fact, the governor's been dropping hints about diplomacy lately. It seems he's found out from the papers that the people ain't over and above pleased with the way things have been carried on by the ambassadors we've got now, and he thinks there might be a chance there in a few years' time. I don't much care what it is. I suppose I shall keep going somehow."
Lucius and Betty were talking quietly together on the other side of the table.
"Only two more years," Lucius was saying. "Won't it be ripping, Betty, when we're settled down in a house of our own?"