“Say what you like. You’ll excuse my not blushing.”
“And in addition to those great advantages, a wonderful talent for one of the fine arts. I believe, my dear Percy, that you are a musician of a high order——”
“Thanks again! Here’s your health!” interjected the young fellow. “Yes, I can ‘play a bit, and sing a bit, and jump Jim Crow.’ As to being a musician——” he shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
“You play and sing like an artist, my dear Percy, and most young fellows so highly endowed as you are would have made a name for themselves and a place in the world.”
“Instead of which, here I am in dingy Soho, with the last two quarters’ rent unpaid, and forced to borrow a five-pound note from my dear friend, Mr. Spenser Churchill,” he said, lightly.
The philanthropist shook his head.
“What good will a five-pound note do you, Percy?”
“Well, ten pounds would certainly do me more good. Are you going to make it ten?”
“I will make it much more than ten if you will listen to me and—er—promise to follow my advice. Just consider your position, as I say, my dear Percy. Have you no ambition? Surely you, with your great gifts and youth and good looks, must feel that this is not the place for you——”
“That I am wasting my sweetness on the desert air. Just so. I often feel it; but once having got lost in the desert, it’s rather difficult to find one’s way out, you see. Have I no ambition?” The black eyes flashed, and the clear olive tint of his complexion grew warm. “Of course I have! What do you take me for—a mule, a packhorse? Why, man, I never see a well-dressed man of my own age but I envy him his clothes; I never lean over the railings in the park and watch the fellows riding by but I envy them their horses and their acquaintance with the pretty girls—the daughters and wives of swell people; I never pass a good club but I feel that I’d give ten years of my life to be a member and one of the class to which it belongs. Do you think I live in this stifling den from choice? Do you think I dine on a sixpenny plate of meat, and drink porter, sit in the gallery of a theatre, and wear old clothes because I like doing it?”