“Well?” said Lucian, looking up, laughing, from the sofa upon which he had been cast. “Own up! Why do you keep me here?”
“Because you have a damnable way of getting yourself liked. Because you’re sick.”
“Sh! don’t swear like that, sonny; you really do shock me. And so you like me?”
“I’ve always a respect for people who find me out,” retorted Farquhar. “The others—Lord, what fools—what fools colossal! But you’ve grit; you know your own mind; you do what you want, and not what your dashed twopenny-halfpenny passions want. Besides, you’re ill,” he wound up again, with a change of tone which sent Lucian’s eyebrows up to his shaggy hair.
“You’re a nice person for a small Sunday-school!” was his comment. “Well, well! So you profess yourself superior to dashed twopenny-halfpenny passions—such as affection, for example?”
“I was bound to stop you going. You’d have died at my door and made a scandal.”
“You know very well that never entered your head. Take care what you say; I can still go, you know.”
Farquhar laughed, half angry; he chafed under Lucian’s control; would fain have denied it, but could not. “Confound you, I wish I’d never seen you!” he said.
“You’ll wish that more before you’ve done. I’m safe to bring bad luck. Gimme your hand and I’ll tell your fortune. I can read the palm like any gypsy; got a drop of Romany blood in me, I guess.”
“You’ll not read mine,” said Farquhar, grimly, putting it out.