“I wish I had his future,” said some one else.
“Even if you had to take his past with it?” a woman asked (Mrs Valetta).
“Certainly: that wouldn’t hurt me.”
“It might hurt a few women though,” sneered Mrs Skeffington-Smythe.
“How unfair women are!” said Lord Gerry. “If a man said a thing like that he would have to back it up or take the consequences.”
“Oh! I am quite ready to do both,” she answered perkily, and glanced at her great friend Miss Cleeve, who merely stared at her cards.
“You can’t blame a man because women are fools,” said the Mining Commissioner, a slight man full of heavy philosophy. Judy, with a prim air, abruptly changed the subject, but in five minutes they were back to it again, like cats to cream.
It transpired that “Kim” was short for Kimberley, where he had dealt with diamond mines, and made and lost a fortune.
“But wasn’t that a very long time ago?” I was surprised into asking. For I had passed through Kimberley and found that its day of glory had departed.
“Long? why, yes, it certainly wa-s,” drawled Mr Hunloke, the lawyer, wagging his head. “But Kim is no newly-hatched birdling.”