She listened, so much amused, that she really could scarcely feel angry.
“My dear Ronald,” she said very impertinently, “you have a morality altogether of your own; it is so extremely old-fashioned that you can’t expect anybody to make themselves ridiculous by adopting it. As for ‘a job,’ isn’t the whole of government a job? When you’ve cleaned out Downing Street it will be time to bring your brooms in here.”
At that moment Cocky put his head in between the door-curtains and nodded to Hurstmanceaux. “She’s made me a guinea-pig, Ronnie,” he said, with his little thin laugh. “Didn’t think I should take to business, did you? Have you seen the papers? Lord, they’re such fun! I’ve bought ten copies of Truth.”
His wife laughed.
“It’s no use reading Truth to Ronnie. He’s no sense of fun; he never had.”
“I have some sense of shame,” replied Hurstmanceaux, looking with loathing on his brother-in-law’s thin, colorless, grinning face. “It is an old-fashioned thing; but if this wretched little cur were not too feeble for a man to touch, I would teach him some respect for it with a hunting-crop.”
Then he pushed past Cocky, who was still between the door-curtains, and went downstairs to take his way to Otterbourne House.
Cocky laughed shrilly and gleefully.
“Jove! what a wax he’s in,” said Cocky, greatly diverted. “Just as if he didn’t know us by this time!”
“He is always so absurd,” replied Mouse. “He has no common sense and no perception.”