"Well," said Peter, "that's nice. I wish I had."
His friend turned a grave regard on him. "The sort of man who rides a motor-bicycle.... You really should, Margery," he went on, "learn to be more fastidious. You mustn't let yourself be either dazzled by fancy waistcoats or sympathetically moved by unclean collars. Neither is interesting."
"I never said they were," Peter said. "It's the people inside them...."
Peter, in brief, was a lover of his kind, and the music life played to him was of a varied and complex nature. But, looking back, it was easy to see how there had been, running through all the variations, a dominant motive in the piece.
As Peter listened to the boiling of his egg, and thought how hard it would be when he took it off, the dominant motive came in and stood by the fire, and looked down on Peter. He jingled things in his pockets and swayed to and fro on his heels like his uncle Evelyn, and he was slim in build, and fair and pale and clear-cut of face, and gentle and rather indifferent in manner, and soft and casual in voice, and he was in his fourth year, and life went extremely well with him.
"It boils," he told Peter, of the egg.
Peter took it off and fished it out with a spoon, and began rummaging for an egg-cup and salt and marmalade and buns in the locker beneath his window seat. Having found these things, he composed himself in the fat arm-chair to dine, with a sigh of satisfaction.
"You slacker," Urquhart observed. "Well, can you come to-morrow? The drag starts at eleven."
"It's quite hard," said Peter, unreasonably disappointed in it. "Oh, yes, rather; I'll come." How short the time for doing things had suddenly become.
Urquhart remarked, looking at the carpet, "What a revolting mess. Why?"