"Then my book comes to the ground, egad."
Lord Verney simply raised his head with a little sniff, as if he were smelling at a snuff-box.
"Well, Arthur must have something, you know."
"My brother, the Honourable Arthur Kiffyn Verney, is past receiving anything at my hands, and I don't think he probably looked for anything, about it, at any time from yours."
"Well, but it's just the time for what I'm thinking of. You wouldn't give him a tombstone in his lifetime, I suppose, though you are a genius. Now, I happen to know he wished a tombstone. You'd like a tombstone, though not now—time enough in a year or two, when you're fermenting in your lead case."
"I'm not thinking of tombstones at present, sir, and it appears to me that you are giving yourself a very unusual latitude—about it."
"I don't mean in the mausoleum at Ware. Of course that's a place where people who have led a decorous life putrify together. I meant at the small church of Penruthyn, where the scamps await judgment."
"I—a—don't see that such a step is properly for the consideration of any persons—about it—outside the members of the Verney family, or more properly, of any but the representatives of that family," said Lord Verney, loftily, "and you'll excuse my not admitting, or—or, in fact, admitting any right in anyone else."
"He wished it immensely."
"I can't understand why, sir."