“Yes, we are all eager to see him,” said the doctor, and then the tone of his voice changed so completely that Anne could see that it was another, and a serious Mr. Yockney who was speaking, although she observed that his eyes bulged just as much when he was serious as when he was only talking lightly.
“If you ask me, Miss Dunnock, I should say that young man is the very worst type of rotter. Look at the old grocer sweating away at sixty, look at his mother still serving in the shop, look at his little sister with patches on the sides of her boots, while Master Richard is learning to be a gentleman in Paris! There’s no word too bad for him. I should like him to know what decent people think of that sort of gentility!”
“You had better tell him, my dear fellow,” said Mr. Dunnock languidly. “It would do him a world of good, I’ve no doubt. But I must say it is probably not the fault of the son but because of the vanity of the father. Over and over again I have seen a young oaf of that description produced by a couple of vain and silly parents who ruin their children’s lives by denying them nothing.”
“But no decent chap, you must admit....” said Mr. Yockney.
“You think the son is to blame because you are nearer his age and imagine yourself in his position,” said Mr. Dunnock with a smile. “But I, as a father, imagine myself in the position of our excellent grocer. If I were to bring Anne up to expect luxuries, and to suppose that she was born to lead an idle, useless existence, it would not be her fault if she grew up a silly and discontented woman.”
Even without this argument Anne was feeling decidedly uncomfortable, and a clumsy piece of gallantry from Mr. Yockney added to her irritation.
“Stupid, coarse, hidebound brute! Do your eyes bulge because of your manly virtue?” she said under her breath, but she had to confess that there was something in what the doctor had said. She had not noticed the patches on Rachel’s boots herself, and she felt her respect for Mr. Yockney as a doctor increasing with her dislike of him as a man. If it were true, it was disgraceful that Rachel should not have a sound pair of boots, but it was absurd to object to Mrs. Sotheby serving in the shop; would she have been happier at a hydro in Harrogate?
Mr. Dunnock had continued a whimsical description of how he might have brought up his daughter so that she would have been discontented with her life; the doctor replied, but finally they agreed that both of the Sothebys, father and son, were very much to blame, when Anne remarked, in a voice which trembled, that she was fond of the Sothebys and that she thought that it was very fine of them to sacrifice themselves in order to make their son a great artist.
“I can trust you not to be taken in by the word gentleman, Anne, but I am afraid you may be by the word artist. Art, you know, Mr. Yockney, covers a multitude of sins.”
“The best definition of art I have ever heard,” said the doctor, “is that it is the opposite of work.” Mr. Dunnock laughed approvingly, and Mr. Yockney went on, his eyes bulging more than ever with the seriousness of his appeal.