“I know you do, that’s your worst fault. But really, this is rather dreadful. I must proceed to grow up. But tell me honestly, am I a fool?”
“No, of course you’re not, you’re awfully clever. But that’s what we all think about you—you could do so many things and you’re not doing anything.”
He sat on the window-sill, swinging his legs.
“There was once,” he began, “the King of Fools, and he had a most splendid and widely attended Court; and one day the Wisest Man in Christendom came to see and be seen, and he talked all the wisest things that he had ever learnt, and the fools listened with all their ears and thought that they had never heard such folly, and after a time they shouted derisively, not knowing that he was the Wisest Man, ‘Why, he is the biggest fool of them all!’”
“The moral being?”
“Behold, the Wisest Man!” cried Tony, pointing dramatically at his breast. “There, my dear Alice, you have the matter in a nutshell.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” said Alice, laughing, “only it is scarcely convincing. Seriously, Tony, Lady Gale is right. Don’t be one of the rotters like young Seins or Rocky Culler or Dick Staines, who spend their whole day in walking Bond Street and letting their heads wag. Not, of course, that you’d ever be that sort, but it would be rather decent if you did something.”
“Well, I do,” he cried.
“What?” she said.
“I can shoot a gun, I can ride a horse, I can serve corkers from the back line at tennis, and score thirty at moderate cricket; I can read French, German, Italian. I can play bridge—well, fairly—I can speak the truth, eat meringues all day with no evil consequences, stick to a pal, and walk for ever and ever, Amen. Oh, but you make me vain!”