"And I'll have her doing it before long. As a married man, Winch—twice married, but my first wife, poor thing, passed away some years back—let me tell you something. To assert himself with his wife, to bend her to his will, if I may put it that way, a man needs complete financial independence. It is no use trying to bend your wife to your will when five minutes later you have got to try and wheedle twenty-five cents out of her for a cigar. Complete financial independence is essential, Pinch, and that is what I am on the eve of achieving. Some little time back, having raised a certain sum of money—we need not go into the methods which I employed to do so—I bought a large block of stock in a Hollywood Motion Picture Company. Have you ever heard of the Finer and Better Motion Picture Company of Hollywood, Cal.? Let me tell you that you will. It is going to be big, and I shall very shortly make an enormous fortune."
"Talking of the motion-pictures," said George, "I do not deny that many of the women engaged in that industry are superficially attractive, but what I do maintain is that they lack Miss Waddington's intense purity of expression. To me Miss Waddington seems like some...."
"I shall clean up big. It is only a question of time."
"The first thing anyone would notice on seeing Miss Waddington...."
"Thousands and thousands of dollars. And then...."
"A poet has spoken of a young girl as 'standing with reluctant feet where the brook and river meet....'"
Mr. Waddington shook his head.
"It isn't only meat. What causes the real trouble is the desserts. It stands to reason that if a woman insists on cramming herself with rich stuff like what we were having to-night she is bound to put on weight. If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times...."
What Mr. Waddington was about to say for the hundred and first time must remain one of the historic mysteries. For, even as he drew in breath the better to say it, the door opened and a radiant vision appeared. Mr. Waddington stopped in mid-sentence, and George's heart did three back-somersaults and crashed against his front teeth.
"Mother sent me down to see what had become of you," said Molly.