“You’ve come down in the world if you can bring yourself to flatter.”
He grinned.
“You’ll never really dislike me so long as I give you the opportunity to get off a good thing now and then.”
I had to bite my lip to prevent myself from laughing. What he said had a hateful truth in it, and another defect of my character is that I enjoy the company of those, however depraved, who can give me a Roland for my Oliver. I began to feel that my abhorrence for Strickland could only be sustained by an effort on my part. I recognised my moral weakness, but saw that my disapprobation had in it already something of a pose; and I knew that if I felt it, his own keen instinct had discovered it, too. He was certainly laughing at me up his sleeve. I left him the last word, and sought refuge in a shrug of the shoulders and taciturnity.
Chapter XLI
We arrived at the house in which I lived. I would not ask him to come in with me, but walked up the stairs without a word. He followed me, and entered the apartment on my heels. He had not been in it before, but he never gave a glance at the room I had been at pains to make pleasing to the eye. There was a tin of tobacco on the table, and, taking out his pipe, he filled it. He sat down on the only chair that had no arms and tilted himself on the back legs.
“If you’re going to make yourself at home, why don’t you sit in an arm-chair?” I asked irritably.
“Why are you concerned about my comfort?”
“I’m not,” I retorted, “but only about my own. It makes me uncomfortable to see someone sit on an uncomfortable chair.”