Eddy said, “I’m going on a paper for the present.”
Claude (Magdalen) said, “A what? What a funny game! Shall you have to go to weddings and sit at the back and write about the bride’s clothes? What a rag!”
Nevill (the House of Commons) said, “What paper?” in case it should be one on the wrong side. It may here be mentioned (what may or may not have been inferred) that the Bellairs’ belonged to the Conservative party in the state. Nevill a little suspected Eddy’s soundness in this matter (though he did not know that Eddy belonged to the Fabian Society as well as to the Primrose League). Also he knew well the sad fact that our Liberal organs are largely served by Conservative journalists, and our great Tory press fed by Radicals from Balliol College, Oxford, King’s College, Cambridge, and many other less refined homes of sophistry. This fact Nevill rightly called disgusting. He did not think these journalists honest or good men. So he asked, “What paper?” rather suspiciously.
Eddy said, “The Daily Post,” which is a Conservative organ, and also costs a penny, a highly respectable sum, so Nevill was relieved.
“Afraid you might be going on some Radical rag,” he said, quite superfluously, as it had been obvious he had been afraid of that. “Some Unionists do. Awfully unprincipled, I call it. I can’t see how they square it with themselves.”
“I should think quite easily,” said Eddy; but added, to avert an argument (he had tried arguing with Nevill often, and failed), “But my paper’s politics won’t touch me. I’m going as literary reviewer, entirely.”
“Oh, I see.” Nevill lost interest, because literature isn’t interesting, like politics. “Novels and poetry, and all that.” Novels and poetry and all that of course must be reviewed, if written; but neither the writing of them nor the reviewing (perhaps not the reading either, only that takes less time) seems quite a man’s work.
Molly (the girl) said, “I think it’s an awfully interesting plan, Eddy,” though she was a little sorry Eddy wasn’t going into the Church. (The Bellairs were allowed to call it that, though Daphne wasn’t.)
Molly could be relied on always to be sympathetic and nice. She was a sunny, round-faced person of twenty, with clear, amber-brown eyes and curly brown hair, and a merry infectious laugh. People thought her a dear little girl; she was so sweet-tempered, and unselfish, and charmingly polite, and at the same time full of hilarious high spirits, and happy, tomboyish energies. Though less magnetic, she was really much nicer than Daphne. The two were very fond of one another. Everyone, including her brothers and Eddy Oliver, was fond of Molly. Eddy and she had become, in the last two years, since Molly grew up, close friends.
“Well, look here,” said Daphne, “we’ve come for the puppy,” and so they all went to the yard, where the puppy lived.