“My mind and my body are not in absolute accord this moment,” he said, “and I am rather anxious. My body demands some more ice-pudding; my mind tells me it would be extremely unwise. Which am I to listen to, Tom?”
“Give Mr. Dundas some more ice-pudding,” remarked Philip to a footman.
“The laws of hospitality compel me to fall in with my host’s suggestions,” said Evelyn. “Tom, where you are wrong lies in thinking that it is worth while spending all your time in keeping well. He lives in the New Forest, Lady Ellington, and if when you are passing you hear the puffs of a loud steam-engine somewhere near Brockenhurst you will know it is Tom doing deep breathing. He expects in time to become a Ram-jam or something, by breathing himself into Raj-pan-puta.”
Tom Merivale laughed.
“No, I don’t want to become a Ram-jam,” he said, “whatever that may be. I want to become myself.”
“No clothes,” murmured Mrs. Home.
“Become yourself?” asked Lady Ellington.
“Yes, most of us are stunted copies of our real selves,” he said. “Imitations of what we might be. And what might one not be?”
The talk had got for him, at any rate, suddenly serious, and he looked up at Lady Ellington with a sparkling eye.
“Explain,” she said.