"It's the difference of a nuance! And are you extraordinarily happy?" Peter added as his host now obliged him by arranging half-a-dozen canvases so that he could look at them.
"Not so much so, doubtless, as the artistic life ought to make one: because all one's people are not so infatuated as one's electors. But little by little I'm learning the charm of pig-headedness."
"Your mother's very bad," Peter allowed—"I lunched with her day before yesterday."
"Yes, I know, I know"—Nick had such reason to know; "but it's too late, too late. I must just peg away here and not mind. I've after all a great advantage in my life."
His companion waited impartially to hear. "And that would be—?"
"Well, knowing what I want to do. That's everything, you know."
"It's an advantage, however, that you've only just come in for, isn't it?"
"Yes, but the delay and the probation only make me prize it the more. I've got it now; and it makes up for the absence of some other things."
Again Peter had a pause. "That sounds a little flat," he remarked at last.
"It depends on what you compare it with. It has more point than I sometimes found in the House of Commons."