Lily looked over his shoulder for a moment, and saw the justice of the résumé.
"Yes, read it all very carefully, very carefully indeed, Toby," she said. "But just attend to me a moment first; I shan't keep you."
Toby put down the paper with alacrity. The Sportsman tumbled out from underneath it, but he concealed this with the dexterity bred of practice.
"What is it?" he asked, vexed at the interruption, you would have said, but patient of it.
"Toby, speaking purely in the abstract, what do you do if a man wants to borrow money from you?" she asked.
"In the abstract I am delighted to lend it to him," he said. "In the concrete I tell him I haven't got a penny, as a rule."
"I see," said Lily; "but if you had, you would lend it him?"
"Yes; for, supposing that it is the right sort of person who asks you for money, it is rather a compliment. It must be a difficult thing to do, and it implies a sort of intimacy."
"And if it is the wrong sort of person?" asked Lily.
"The wrong sort of person has usually just that shred of self-respect that prevents him asking you."