“Oh, of course,” he said, “if she’ll let me. Of course. How could I otherwise? ... Look at that elephant: those boys have given him a bath bun.”
He seemed to think he had been sufficiently confidential.
“It’s nice to feel you’ve got a bit of capital behind you,” he said smugly, and Catherine replied: “Yes, very nice.”
Then he developed a spurious boisterousness.
After tea they walked round all the open-air portions of the establishment. One of the elephants picked up coins off the ground and put them in his keeper’s pocket. Mr. Hobbs threw down a penny.
“Clever animal,” he remarked, after the trick had been successfully performed, “but I expect the man keeps the money.”
“I daresay he does,” said Catherine.
Outside the monkey enclosure he said: “I suppose we were all like this at one time.... Swinging from trees by our tails. That’s what Darwin said, didn’t he?”
Afterwards, in Regent’s Park, he became himself again. At Portland Road Underground Station he bought an evening paper and consulted its inside page minutely.
“My shares,” he announced, sotto voce, as they sat together in the train, “are now worth six hundred and sixty pounds. Another rise, you see.... Nothing like money for making money, is there?”