Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/282

268 Her dear friend, however, had lost patience with her levity. "Give it away—just for a luxury of protest and a stoppage of chatter—to some cause as unlike as possible that of Mr. Bender's power of sound and his splendid reputation: to the Public, to the Authorities, to the Thingumbob, to the Nation!"

Lady Sandgate broke into horror while Lord John stood sombre and stupefied. "Ah, my dear creature, you've flights of extravagance!"

"One thing's very certain," Lord Theign quite heedlessly pursued—"that the thought of my property on view there does give intolerably on my nerves, more and more every minute that I'm conscious of it; so that, hang it, if one thinks of it, why shouldn't I, for my relief, do again, damme, what I like?—that is bang the door in their faces, have the show immediately stopped?" He turned with the attraction of this idea from one of his listeners to the other. "It's my show—it isn't Bender's surely—and I can do just as I choose with it."

"Ah, but isn't that the very point?"—and Lady Sandgate put it to Lord John. "Isn't it Bender's show much more than his?"