"Then why shouldn't we go and see him, sir?"
He put the question fully believing that it would bring the whole ridiculous castle down with a crash, as it were, upon the table before him. Its effect, however, was entirely otherwise. The parson stood up immediately.
"My carriage is waiting," he said; "nothing could possibly suit me better."
Alban, however, remained seated.
"Mr. Geary," he exclaimed, "you have forgotten to tell me something."
"I can think of nothing."
"The conditions of this slap-up job—the high society and all the rest of it! What are the conditions?"
He spoke almost with contempt, and deliberately selected a vulgar expression. It had come to him by this time that some unknown friend had become interested in his career and that this amiable curate desired to make either a schoolmaster or an organist of him. "Old Boriskoff knew I was going to get the sack and little Lois has been chattering," he argued—nor did this line of reasoning at all console him. Sidney Geary, meanwhile, felt as though some one had suddenly applied a slab of melting ice to those grammatical nerves which Cambridge had tended so carefully.
"My dear Mr. Kennedy—not 'slap-up,' I beg of you. If there are any conditions attached to the employment my patron has to offer you, is not he the best person to state them? Come and hear him for yourself. I assure you it will not be waste of time."