“And he went off to the Club!”—Patsy was talking more to herself than audibly—“he said the boys would be missing him—the boys, that’s all!”
Somewhere a bell rang musically. A child’s voice called “Mumsie!” And a man came and stood in the door, waiting—his eyes fixed yearningly on the tear-stained face within.
Patsy looked at him—looked at the little stepmother; but as she slipped a hand through the arm of each of them, it was not of them she was thinking, but of Chalmers—clearly a clubman, pure and simple.
VII
PIX—PURELY A PHILANTHROPIST
“Don’t be so lazy,” said Kent, “get something to do.”
“I have something to do,” said Pix; “I’m a philanthropist.”
“That’s what I mean;—get an occupation.”
“My dear boy,” reproachfully Pix looked at him, “don’t say unnecessary things. You know I was educated for the position of an English gentleman; though my brains in the first place weren’t half bad. Besides, I make a very good philanthropist.”
“So does anybody.”
“Who’s rich enough,” added Pix, lighting another pipe. “One can make quite exhaustive use of being rich, d’ye know, Chalmers? You and I, for instance, shouldn’t have to be sitting here on a Park bench unless we were rich; I shouldn’t dare to be smoking a pipe, you wouldn’t dare to be puffing Pall Malls at a shilling the box—you’d be opening and re-opening a case of monogrammed Egyptians you couldn’t afford, for the sake of showing any one who happened to pass that you could afford them.”