‘No more should I, my dear fellow. Absolutely impossible. A man can’t marry on seven hundred a year, you see, can he?’
Edward laughed. ‘I could,’ he answered, ‘very easily. No doubt, you couldn’t. But then you haven’t got anybody in your eye; while I, you know, am anxious as soon as I can to marry Marian.’
‘Not got anybody in my eye!’ Harry Noel cried, leaning back in his chair and opening his two hands symbolically in front of him with an expansive gesture. ‘Oh, haven’t I. Why, there was a pretty little girl I saw last Wednesday down at the Buckleburies—a Miss Dupuy, I think, they called her—I positively believe, a countrywoman of yours, Edward, from Trinidad; or was it Mauritius? one of those sugary-niggery places or other, anyhow; and I assure you I fairly lost the miserable relics of my heart to her at our first meeting. She’s going to be at the boatrace to-morrow; and—yes, I’ll run down there in the dogcart, on the chance of seeing her. Will you come with me?’
‘What o’clock?’
‘Eleven. A reasonable hour. You don’t catch me getting up at five o’clock in the morning and making the historical Noel nose, which I so proudly inherit, turn blue with cold and shivering at that time of the day, even for the honour of the old ’varsity. Plenty of time to turn in and get a comfortable snooze, and yet have breakfast decently before I drive you down to-morrow morning in my new dogcart.’
‘All right. I’ll come with you, then.—Are you going out now? Just post this letter for me, please, will you?’
Noel took it, and glanced at the address half unintentionally. ‘The Hon. James Hawthorn,’ he said, reading it over in a thoughtless mechanical way and in a sort of undertone soliloquy, ‘Agualta Estate, Trinidad.—Why, I didn’t know, Teddy, this mysterious governor of yours was actually a real live Honourable. What family does he belong to, then?’
‘I don’t think Honourable means that out in the colonies, you know,’ Edward answered, stirring the embers into a final flicker. ‘I fancy it’s only a cheap courtesy title given to people in the West Indies who happen to be members of the Legislative Council.’ He paused for a minute, still seated, and poking away nervously at the dying embers; then he said in a more serious voice: ‘Do you know, Noel, there’s a district judgeship in Trinidad going to be filled up at once by the Colonial Office?’
‘Well, my dear boy; what of that? I know a promising young barrister of the Inner Temple who isn’t going to be such an absurd fool as to take the place, even if it’s offered to him.’
‘On the contrary, Harry, I’ve sent in an application myself for the post this very evening.’