“One minute, David,” he said, and took him by the arm. “Look here—I think I ought to know. Is my uncle likely to live on indefinitely? Did you mean what you said upstairs?”
It was the second time that David Blake had been asked if he meant those words. He answered a trifle irritably.
“Why should I say what I don’t mean? He may live three years or he may die to-morrow. Why on earth should I say it if I didn’t think it?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Edward. “You might have been saying it just to cheer the old man up.”
There was a certain serious simplicity about Edward Mottisfont. It was this quality in him which his uncle stigmatised as priggishness. Your true prig is always self-conscious, but Edward was not at all self-conscious. From his own point of view he saw things quite clearly. It was other people’s points of view which had a confusing effect upon him. David laughed.
“It didn’t exactly cheer him up,” he said. “He isn’t as set on living as all that comes to.”
Edward appeared to be rather struck by this statement.
“Isn’t he?” he said.
He opened the door as he spoke, but suddenly closed it again. His tone altered. It became eager and boyish.
“David, I say—you know Jimmy Larkin was transferred to Assam some months ago? Well, I wrote and asked him to remember me if he came across anything like specimens. Of course his forest work gives him simply priceless opportunities. He wrote back and said he would see what he could do, and last mail he sent me——”