“Sorry I look such a cockney.”
“Everybody who comes from town isn’t a cockney. It would be rather awful if it were so.”
“Then how could you tell?”
“Oh, the best of people get a bit careless in the country. It’s something in the way town men put on their clothes. Fellows who live in the country will tell you that it isn’t quite good form to wear your clothes too well, but that’s all rot. They’re jealous because they know they’re slovenly.”
I liked the way he talked, and, finding me companionable, he showed not the least desire to move. A new friend always interested me, so I put away any unpleasant reflections as to our future relations, and abandoned myself to the pleasure of a novel and pleasant companionship. My cousin chattered on, and gradually, as will almost invariably happen when two young men are talking together—the more especially over the bowl—the eternal feminine dominated. He was obviously neurotic, for all his healthy skin and philistine view of life in general.
He talked of women incessantly, but without any reference to their share in the higher things of life.
He hinted vaguely of the existence of the cottage maiden, but declined to be drawn when I encouraged him to take me into his confidence.
“It’s a ripping thing to be in love; in fact, it’s the only thing that reconciles me to stopping in this beastly hole.”
“Romance is life,” I murmured, lilting agreeably to the rhythm he desired. “I don’t understand how people get on without it.”
“I suppose there comes a time when everyone wants to settle down,” he said, echoing the usual concessions of profligate youth to the demands of a period so very far ahead that there appears to be little inconvenience in confiding all promises of reformation to its keeping.