Letty blushed, and ran to meet Sebastian. A few moments later, with a puzzled air, she fetched in her father from the garden. Sebastian wanted to speak to him. “No, Pups, I don’t a bit know why.” Mrs. Johnson, from a deep-rooted conviction that men could not be trusted to be broad-minded without a woman to guide them, joined the conclave unasked. The quartette had the dining-room to themselves.
... “Decided not to accept your father’s allowance?” repeated Mr. Johnson incredulously. “Why ever not?”
And again the disciple was confronted by the difficulty of explaining the creed of the master, to apparently unsympathetic listeners. He stole a glance at Letty, and felt braced by her answering smile. Her blue eyes were no longer bewildered—they shone at him like stars.
“It’s a man I know,” Sebastian started rather lamely, “who has put me in the way of—well—of thinking rather differently about life. About wealth that isn’t striven for, and—and things one gets too easily.”
“I like argerment,” Mat Johnson put in briskly. “I’m quite a good one for argerment. Now what I say about what you say he says, is this: unless we don’t mind taking things easily from other folk, other folk will take them easily enough from us. And that’s logic.”
“But that would be nothing to do with me; that would be their concern, and their loss of the—oh, of the fun of striving, don’t you see, sir?” Sebastian was afraid he was making out rather a poor case for the defence. “It’s with the effect of easy achievement on me personally that my friend is concerned. He says I’m in danger of growing fat.”
Matthew Johnson, himself inclined to corpulence, took the allusion as a personal affront, and was coldly silent, while Mrs. Johnson interrupted indignantly: “I’m sure you have an elegant figure, Sebastian; hasn’t he, Letty?”
Letty said nothing; only smiled softly, as at some misty golden thought.
“You introduce me to this pal of yours, Levi,” continued Mr. Johnson, recovering his good-humour, and tilting back his chair at the ceiling; “and we’ll tackle the matter together. I daresay he’s young, and maybe I can put him right on one or two bits. And as for you, run back to your dad and tell him you’ve thought better of that fifteen hundred quid a year, and that you’ll pocket it with many thanks. See?” and the note of rising authority on the last syllable drew from Sebastian a quick:
“Yes, I see. But I won’t. That would be rather stupid and inconsistent, wouldn’t it? After I had so definitely refused either to go into the business or accept the cash.”