“It doesn’t necessarily follow, Laetitia,” said Lady Charlotte Greg, who felt with justice that Miss Laetitia was impinging upon her prerogative of dispensing universal information. “Before now I have known quite second-rate people exhibit at the Royal Academy.”
“Have you, though?” said Cheriton. “That is interesting.”
“There is Mottrom,” said Lady Charlotte Greg. “One finds his pictures there continually. Nothing will convince me that Mottrom is first rate. One feels one ought really to draw the line at the music of Wagner and the pictures of Mottrom.”
“Capital!” said Cheriton.
The voice of Miss Perry was heard again in the land.
“Do you like the pictures of Joseph Wright of Derby?” inquired that art critic.
Jim’s mother looked at Lord Cheriton, and Lord Cheriton looked at Jim’s mother with great demureness.
“A police constable, was he not?” said Lady Charlotte Greg.
“Lord Cheriton knows,” said Miss Perry.
“Very probably,” said that authority, with the air of one to whom a great truth has presented itself unexpectedly. “To be sure, what could be more natural than Police Constable Joseph Wright of Derby?”