“Well—being neither a genius nor a fool, I have to be content with being a banker.”
“I say—are lawyers part of the common herd, Bright?” enquired Wingfield.
“Not if you’re going to be one, my dear boy,” answered the elder man. “But I hope you’re not going to nail me out on my statement like an owl over a stable door. It’s not kind. It’s much nicer to be misunderstood in a friendly way than to have all one’s friends up on their hind legs trying to understand one, when one hasn’t meant anything particular. By Jove! There goes the bell again! I wonder who it is?”
“What ears you have!” exclaimed Mrs. Bright. “I didn’t hear anything. But it must be Jack Ralston. He’d come early, you know.”
Katharine glanced surreptitiously at the two men, leaning back in her chair with half-closed eyes. Bright’s expression became a little more set, and he moved one foot uneasily. Wingfield looked at Mrs. Bright as she spoke, and then straight at Katharine. Ralston entered in a dead silence, glanced quickly at Wingfield, greeted every one in turn, in the quiet, easy way peculiar to him, which was quite different from Bright’s slow and rather heavy manner, and from Archibald Wingfield’s physical style, so to say, which showed itself in long, swift, powerful movements, like the great stride of a magnificent hunter going along in the open.
“You’ll be tired of the sight of me to-day,” said Ralston, smiling as he sat down near Mrs. Bright.
“No fear of that, Jack,” answered Bright, anxious to show Katharine that he was not displeased at Ralston’s coming. “My mother always looks upon you as a sort of second son.”
“The prodigal son,” suggested John.
“Is that a hint to produce the fatted calf?” asked Bright. “Or have you dined? You don’t look as though you had.”
“Why? What’s the matter with me? I’ve just come from dinner. I dined at home with my mother.”