Mammon and Co.

"Have you got a little nest-egg, dear?" asked Alice sympathetically. "How nice! I always have, but the stupid cards ate a big piece of the yolk last night."

"I know; they do. But, on the other hand, they fill it up again. I expect most women have nest-eggs of some sort. It may be money, or virtue, or vice, or secrets. Well, I'm going to drop mine slap into the Australian goldfields."

"I intend to be cautious," said Lady Haslemere. "But just to spite Tom I shall risk something. Tom was most tiresome and interfering. He says women know nothing about business. A lot he knows himself! If I had to pick out one man eminently unfitted to be director of anything, it would be Tom."

"I can't have Jack left out in the cold like that," said Kit.

"They are a pretty pair. Tom's honest; that is all that can be said for him."

Kit screamed with laughter.

"I bet you that Jack is as honest as Tom," she said. "But that is just the way with your family, dear. They all think that they have a monopoly of the cardinal virtues, just as Mr. Leiter thought he could have a corner in corn. But, seriously, I do hope and trust that Alington's mines are sound. Think how the Radical papers would shout if something – well, if something untoward happened. Salaries, you know! Supposing the British public dropped a lot of money and there was an inquiry? Personally, I think Jack is rash to be chairman. He is paid for his name – he knows that perfectly well; but directors are supposed to be dimly responsible. And his boss cheats at baccarat! Also I think he shouldn't have a salary as director; that doesn't look well."

"That will surely be periphrased in the accounts, won't it?" asked Alice.

"I hope so; periphrasis covers a multitude of cheques."

They had got round to Hyde Park Corner again, and rode slowly through the gate into the roaring street. Kit's eye brightened at the sight of life; she forgot about her dream of white whiskers.

"I think gold-mines are an excellent form of gambling," remarked Alice. "You can play directly after breakfast. Now, one can't play cards directly after breakfast. I tried the other day, but it was a hopeless failure. Even naturals looked horrid by daylight."

"Gold-mines are a tonic," said Kit "You take them after breakfast like Easton's syrup, and they pick you up wonderfully. You should see how brisk Jack is getting in the morning."

"Well, au revoir, dear. Half-past eight, isn't it? May Tom come too?"

"Oh yes, and Haslemere if you like," said Kit, turning up Park Lane.

"I don't like," called out Alice shrilly, going straight on.

Kit giggled at intervals all the way home.

Mrs. Murchison's cup of happiness was very full that evening. Though the quiet little dinner had grown about eighteen, yet everyone was of Kit's own particular set, and it was what Kit called a "Christian dinner" – that is to say, everyone called each other by their Christian names. "So much nicer than a heathen dinner," she said to Mrs. Murchison. "You may meet cannibals there."

Mrs. Murchison herself was taken in by Tom Abbotsworthy, and it is doubtful which of them enjoyed their conversation most. She was enchanted to find herself with him, and her own remarks were really memorable.

"I just adore English society," she said over the first mouthfuls of soup. "Our brightest talkers in America cannot be compared with the ordinary clubmen in London. And the dinners, how charming!"

"You find people amusing?" asked Tom.

"Yes, and the substantiality of it. Not only the viands and the drinks, but the really improving conversation – the – the tout à fait."

Tom had the greatest of all social gifts – gravity.

"You think people have less tout à fait in America?" he asked.

"There's none of it; and now I come to think of it, I mean tout ensemble. How quick of you to see what I meant! But that's just it. My heart – and I told Mr. Murchison so the first time I saw him – is English. My head may be American, but my heart is English. Those were my words, ipse dixit."

"Very remarkable," said Tom.

"The air of dignity," continued Mrs. Murchison (soup always thawed her), "and the simile of tastes which I find in England! The wealth without ostensity – I should say ostentiousness! The solid comfort and no gimcrackiness!"

"I am afraid you will find plenty of gimcrackiness if you go to the suburbs," said Tom.

"I haven't yet projected any trips to the suburbs," said Mrs. Murchison with some dignity.

"Of course not. The proper definition of suburbs is the place to which one does not go. They are merely a negative geographical expression."

"Well, I'm an Anglophobe," said Mrs. Murchison with conviction; "and I believe nothing against England, not even its suburbs. But what would you say, Lord Abbotsworthy, was the main tendency of the upper classes in England?"

Tom was slightly puzzled.

"Tendency in what line?" he asked.

"By tendency I mean the direction in which they are advancing?"

"We are advancing towards America," he replied, after a moment's thought. "That is where our fiction goes, and that is whence our inventions come."

Mrs. Murchison dropped a large truffle off her fork, and remained a moment with it poised.

"I guess that's deep," she said. "I shall cable that to Mr. Murchison."

Tom wondered silently whether Mr. Murchison would be as much puzzled by it as he was himself; but his wife proceeded to elucidate.

"The fictions are the inventions, you mean," she said. "The one goes to where the other comes from. The oneness of the two countries, in fact. The brightest thing I've heard this summer," she observed.

Tom was lost in contemplation at the thought of the deep gloom in which all else that Mrs. Murchison had heard this summer must be involved, and he was grateful when that lady, after a reflective pause on his dazzling remark, changed the subject.

"What a lovely man Lord Evelyn is!" she said.

"Lord Evelyn? Oh, Toby! Yes, he's an excellent fellow."

"By lovely, I do not refer to his personal appearance," said Mrs. Murchison, "for that is homely. But by lovely I refer to his happy and amiable disposition."

"You have hit him off completely," said Tom. "Happy and amiable is just what Toby is."

Mrs. Murchison's mind went off for a moment on a maternal excursion at the sight of Lily and Toby, who were talking eagerly together, but came quickly back again.

"And the vivacity at present depicted in his face is considerable," went on Mrs. Murchison in a burst of analytic intuition. "I just adore vivacity. Vivacity without screaming, Lord Abbotsworthy, is what I just adore. Mr. Murchison is very vivacious; but to hear him when he is being vivacious, why, – you'd think he had the chicken-pox – I should say whooping-cough."

"That must be very alarming until you are used to it," said Tom.

"It is that. And the choking fit which sometimes ensues on his hilarity – why, I have seen times and again his life hung by a hair, like the sword of Demosthenes at Belshazzar's feast."

Mrs. Murchison delivered herself of this surprising allusion with the most touching confidence. She liked a well-turned sentence, and repeated it softly to herself.

"Such anxieties are inseparable from the union of the married life," said Tom in a voice that trembled slightly.

Kit from the other side of the table had just burst out into a loud meaningless laugh, and he suspected that she had overheard.