Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/10

Rh and then I can go straight from Lord Hoggenheimer's. I know you won't want to leave as long as there's a note left in the band."

"Yes, that will be best," she agreed; "and now that's settled comfortably,I want to have a little quiet talk with you."

"May I smoke?" he asked, at once plunged in dejection. He knew his mother's little quiet talks.

"Of course you may smoke, if it doesn't distract your attention, because what I've got to say is very serious indeed. I've been thinking things over for a long time; you mustn't suppose this is a new idea. You know, my darling boy, my little income dies with me. Yes, I know you are getting on very nicely in your profession, but it only advances you financially, and that very slowly. There's no social advancement in it."

"I shall invent something some of these days, and then you can have all the social and financial advancement you want," he said rather bitterly.

"That's another point. You have no time for your inventions—I'm sure you've often told me so. You want time, and you want money, and if you don't want social advancement your poor old mother wants it for you,"

"Well?" he said, now very much on his guard.

"Think what it would be like," she went on, "never to have to work for money—just to have that workshop you've so often talked about, and just look in and do a little inventing there whenever you felt inclined. No bothers, no interruptions—entirely your own master. And all the steel things you want always handy."

"A lovely and accurate picture of an inventor's life!" he laughed.

"It's nothing to laugh about," she said; "because I have an idea. Why shouldn't you marry? Some nice girl whom you really like and who has money."

"When I marry," he said, getting up and standing with his back to the ferns in the fireplace, "it won't be to live on my wife."