“Why not join a club, Frank?”
“I am down for the ‘Travellers,’ but it may be years before I am elected, and I don’t believe I shall care for it when I am. I have been into several clubs with men I know, and they seem to me the slowest places going. Men look in, and moon about the room, and take up a paper, and then throw it down again, and go and look out of the window, and then order their dinner, and grumble over it when they have got it. My dear fellow, it’s well enough for old fogies, but I can see no pull in it at all. Of course, in the evening one can play billiards, but as I am out nearly every night, I don’t see that I shall gain much by that.”
“Why don’t you keep a horse, Frank?”
“Well, I might do that, Prescott; but I don’t think I should ever go out on the beggar if I had one. I don’t care much for riding at the best of times; and as to going up and down Rotten Row, it would drive me out of my mind in a week. No; when summer comes I shall buy a yacht of about twenty tons, and cruise about; but the question is the winter.”
“Well, Frank, as you do not care, I have heard you say, for country sports, I really think it would be worth your while to think seriously of entering yourself at the bar, or of taking to literary work; or in fact making some sort of aim for yourself. I confess that, as a busy man myself, I can hardly conceive a man having the whole day on his hands, with nothing definite before him.”
“My dear fellow,” Frank said despondently; “what on earth would be the good of my entering at the bar? I should never read—you know that as well as I do; and consequently I should have no more to do than I have now, with the additional disadvantage of being obliged to dine so often in Hall, instead of being able to get my dinner where I like. As to literary work, the thing’s simply absurd; what on earth should I write about? And when I had fixed on a subject, what in the name of goodness should I have to say about it? Upon my word, Prescott, your suggestions are positively childish.”
Prescott shrugged his shoulders, and smoked for some time in silence. Presently he took his pipe from his mouth, and asked suddenly—
“Why don’t you get married, Frank?”
“Married! My dear Prescott, I wish you would not talk in that light way of such a serious business. I should as soon think of flying up to the moon. Besides, whom in the world should I marry? I go out to parties and balls, and flirt with dozens of girls, but I never think any more of them, nor do they of me. Just imagine one of their faces, if I were to say, ‘Madam, your obedient servant is on the look-out for a wife; will you supply the deficiency?’”
Frank laughed loudly; Prescott smiled, and then was quiet for some time. At last he said, with a sort of effort—