“I know you don’t. You are always on stilts. You never see the comedy of Cocky.”
“I do not see the comedy of what is disreputable and dishonorable. His father will be most cruelly distressed.”
“He should give us more money then. We must do what we can to keep ourselves; Poodle never helps us. Well—hardly ever.”
Hurstmanceaux emitted a sound very like a big dog’s growl.
“Otterbourne has been endlessly good to you. It is no use for him or anybody else to fill a sieve with water.”
“Why don’t he give us the house? We are obliged to pay fifteen hundred a year for this nutshell, while he lives all alone in that huge place.”
“Why should he not live in his own house? What decent gentleman would have Cocky under his roof?”
“You have no kind of feeling, Ronnie. I ought to have Otterbourne House. I have always said so. I can’t give a ball here. Not even a little dance. Poodle might keep his own apartments, those he uses on the ground floor there, but we ought to have all the rest.”
“He allowed you to have that ball there the other night, and all the cost of it fell on him.”
“That is a great deal for him to do certainly! To lend us the house once in a season when it is our right to live in it altogether!”