“Christopher, behave yourself. Don’t mind his bad manners, Sam. It’s sheer nervousness on his part, he can’t help it.”
A newspaper was flung dexterously across his face.
“Which gives point to my remark,” continued Aymer, calmly folding it. “Well, have you enjoyed your day? Madness, I call it, the river in March!”
Christopher plunged into an account of their jaunt to which his companion listened in complete bewilderment, hardly recognising the simple pleasures of their holiday in their dress of finished detail and humour.
“Is that a true account?” asked Aymer, catching the tail of a broad grin.
“I didn’t see the water-rat dressing himself, or the girl with the red shoes,” said Sam slowly. “My, what a chap you are, Christopher, to spin a yarn. Wish I could reel it off to mother and the kids like that.”
He found himself in a few minutes discoursing with Aymer on the variety and history of his family. It 153 was not for some minutes or so that the great subject was approached.
“I suppose,” said Aymer at last, “I need not ask if you and Christopher have been discussing his little plan for your future. What do you think of it, Sam?”
Christopher got up and walked to the window. Minute by minute a sense of overwhelming disappointment and shame obliterated the once plausible idea. It was not only an opportunity missed, it was wasted, thrown away. What glory or distinctions, what ambitions could be fulfilled in the narrow confines of a grocer’s shop—a nightmare vision of an interminable vista of red canisters, mahogany counters, biscuit boxes and marble slabs, swam before his eyes. It was no use denying it. It was a cruel disappointment ... and what would Cæsar think?
Meanwhile Sam, in answer to Aymer’s questions, had stumbled out the statement he thought it a rattling fine thing for him and was very much obliged.