"Surely—only to learn how much ingratitude exists in the world."
Lady Sophia stamped, bit her lip, and looked like a ruffled cockatoo in a bad temper. She wanted to quarrel, and it annoyed her that Prelice would not meet her half way, by supplying a reason. She had to invent the quarrel, and bring about the quarrel, and carry on the quarrel, and finish the quarrel without assistance. "Marry!" was the one word which suggested itself, and she hoped that it would be like a red rag to a bull.
"Oh, Jerusalem!" Prelice shook his closely cropped fair head. "I would much rather serve brother-man than marry sister-woman. You offer me a choice of unoriginal evils."
"You never will face the truth," declared Lady Sophia irrelevantly; and forthwith—according to an old-established custom—she proceeded to recount the family history—that is, she picked out the worst traits of Prelice's ancestors and debited them to his account. He smoked through two cigarettes, and nodded at intervals, not very much interested, since he had heard the same oration at least a dozen times. Lady Sophia having worked her way from the reign of Elizabeth down to that of Edward VII., ended with a lurid, penny-sensational picture of what would befall her listener in the near future, unless he worked like a nigger.
"Such a bad illustration," interposed Prelice placidly; "niggers don't work. As I have just returned from the West Indies, I ought to know." Lady Sophia snorted down the interruption, and seeing that he was still unimpressed, tried to goad him into industry by mentioning several of his school-fellows who had attained to comparative fame and fortune, while Prelice—as she scathingly put it—had been grovelling in the mud. "Even young Shepworth," ended Lady Sophia, somewhat out of breath, "and he was never clever—even he is Counsel for the Defence this very day in an important murder case."
"I'm deuced sorry for his client," murmured Prelice indolently.
"Why should you be?" demanded his aunt aggressively.
"You said that he wasn't clever."
"He must be." Lady Sophia contradicted herself with feminine calmness. "If he wasn't he certainly would not be talking this very day at the New Bailey. Go and hear him, Prelice, and be ashamed that a fool—yes, a superlative fool—should succeed where you fail."
"What do you mean?" inquired her nephew, with great curiosity. "First you say that Ned isn't clever——"