"Well, Hal, my boy, you have come back prepared I presume to settle down, settle down to some career befitting an English gentleman." Sir Gordon paused to draw Hal's fire. As the young man did not dispute this assumption, he continued with patronizing pomposity.
"We must place you. We must place you, my boy. It won't be an easy matter, will it? Of course you can't go into trade. The Army is the only gentleman's game, but—we must not speak of that. We must not speak of that," and he hastened to get away from a subject so painful. "Now, how about the church?"
"The church?" asked Hal with a laugh.
"Oh, your father could get you a living." Then he added hastily: "It's respectable at least."
"For me? The church?"
"Oh, you don't have to go in for religion; oh, no; oh, my, no! None of that bally rot."
Seeing that her amiable husband was in very deep water, Winifred reached out her hand and encouraged him to go deeper.
"Hal, how stupid of you," she said. "You have assistants, curates, and that sort of thing who do the religion for you. You ride to hounds, play cricket for your county, and enjoy similar spiritual diversions."
"Well, you must do something," said Sir Gordon petulantly, annoyed with the young man's levity. "Of course whatever you decide to try, it is going to be a long hard struggle to live down the Army record; still with time and pluck it may be done. You are an earl's son and you have influential relatives. Well, then, how about politics?"
"Sit in the House and listen to the gabble on the Old Age Pensions and The Licensing Bill? I'd rather be a suffragette and go to jail."