"I say, Kate," he plunged right in, "I can't stand this. I'll have to clear out. I thought I could go through with it a week ago, but it's too much for me. When I acted like a brute just now and—and kissed you it was because I was such a beastly ass as to think a chap like me could make you happy on nothing a year, love in a cottage and all that. But that's what I'm going to do, Kate, only without the love—just plain cottage."
"Yes?"
"The fact is," he floundered on, "I've begun to feel differently about things, about money and all that. Old Baxter's right. Work is the only thing, and—I've made up my mind I'm going to take up farming. You know that place I told you of, Kate. I can get it for next to nothing. It belongs to that uncle I told you about at Wormwood Scrubbs—the disgustingly rich one—you know. You see I'm his favorite nephew—I mean to say his only nephew—which comes to the same thing, doesn't it? At all events he's my favorite uncle, and he's bound to leave me his money sometime, as that's the only way I could ever have enough to pay him back."
"Isn't he the aeroplane uncle?" asked Kate. Her voice sounded listless, and her eyes were fixed on the further shore of the little lake.
"That's the one. He goes in for biplanes. I had rather hoped he'd get a monoplane—not that I bear the dear old chap any ill will, don't you know." He paused and then went on more cheerfully: "But, after all, an uncle is an uncle, isn't he, Kate?"
Lionel had a way of stating great truths that carried his hearers off their feet.
"I believe he is, now that you speak of it," Kate assented. There was a slight twinkle in her eye, but she looked away before Lionel caught it, "What will you do on a farm?"
"Oh, I'm going in for vegetables, potatoes, you know, and all that sort of thing. You get the names out of a catalogue. I'm told the catalogues are free—that's one of the things that decided me—and they contain photographs of all the vegetables—regular family album, don't you know." Lionel laughed for the first time since his downfall. "All you have to do is to compare the photographs with the things, as soon as they come up, and that's how you know which is which. It sounds hard, but really it's perfectly simple when you get the hang of it."
"What if you failed to recognize a vegetable from its photograph?" questioned Kate in a serious voice. "Photographs are sometimes very flattering, you know, especially in catalogues. Suppose you mistook a lettuce for a cabbage?"
"Ah, there you have me. I believe it's almost impossible to tell them apart, that is, until they are ripe, but there's no use burning your bridge—I mean spoiling your cabbage until you come to it—is there, Kate? Of course," he continued, "I shall begin with potatoes. I shall feel perfectly at home with a potato."