"Child, I'm a pauper," he replied. "The descendant of Irish kings; need I say more? There's not a page-boy at the Cecil who hasn't more ordinary comforts in his home than I have. My father's the poorest peer in Ireland. My brother's the poorest eldest son; and I—I tell you I can't afford to spend a week at Ballyneck; the damp in the rooms would ruin my clothes; the sound of the rats rompin' up and down the tapestry would destroy my high spirits; and then where'd I be?"
I looked at him. He, too, then, was of the nouveaux-pauvres, the class that is sinking down, down under the scrambling, upward-climbing feet of the successful. But he took the situation in a different spirit from the way in which my Aunt Anastasia took it. He frankly made what he could out of it. He hoisted the Jolly Roger and became a pirate on the very seas that had engulfed the old order.
Disgraceful of him.... One ought not to wish to listen to what he had to say.
"Champagne tastes on a beer income; that's bad. But here's this little—this little Million girl with a champagne income and no tastes at all yet. I shall be worth half her income to her in consequence," he announced. "I shall be able to give her priceless tips. Advice, you know, about—oh, where to buy all the things she'll want. The cars. The wines and cigars. (Even a grown-up woman isn't often to be trusted about those.) The country house she'll have to take. What about Lovelace Court, Miss Lovelace? Care to have her there, in case the people who have got it want to turn out? I've no doubt I could wangle that for you, if you liked."
I said, feeling bewildered, and flurried, and amused all at once: "What is 'wangle'?"
The Honourable Jim Burke laughed aloud as he devoured his lemon water ice.
"You'll know the meaning of that mystic verb before you have known me very long," he said. "It's the way I make my living."
I looked at him, sitting there so debonair and showy in his expensive raiment, talking so cynically in that golden voice. So typically one of "our" world, as Aunt Anastasia prophetically calls it; yet so ready to rub shoulders with every other kind of world that there may be—Jews, theatrical people, hotel porters, pork-butchers, heiresses!
I asked, rather inquisitively: "Make your living how? What do you do?"
"People, mostly," said the Honourable Jim with a cheery grin.