Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/145

Rh Lance wondered. '"Don't"? Then what's the use?'

'The use of what?'

'Why, of anything. Don't you think I've talent?'

Peter smoked away, for a little, in silence;. then went on: 'It isn't knowledge, it's ignorance that—as we've been beautifully told—is bliss.'

'Don't you think I've talent?' Lance repeated.

Peter, with his trick of queer, kind demonstrations, passed his arm round his godson and held him a moment. 'How do I know?'

'Oh,' said the boy, 'if it's your own ignorance you're defending!'

Again, for a pause, on the sofa, his godfather smoked. 'It isn't. I've the misfortune to be omniscient.'

'Oh, well,' Lance laughed again, 'if you know too much!'

'That's what I do, and why I'm so wretched.'

Lance's gaiety grew. 'Wretched? Come, I say!'

'But I forgot,' his companion went on—'you're not to know about that. It would indeed, for you too, make the too much. Only I'll tell you what I'll do.' And Peter got up from the sofa. 'If you'll go up again, I'll pay your way at Cambridge.'

Lance stared, a little rueful in spite of being still more amused. 'Oh, Peter! You disapprove so of Paris?'

'Well, I'm afraid of it.'

'Ah, I see.'

'No, you don't see—yet. But you will—that is you would. And you mustn't.'

The young man thought more gravely. 'But one's innocence, already'

'Is considerably damaged? Ah, that won't matter,' Peter persisted—'we'll patch it up here.'

'Here? Then you want me to stay at home?'

Peter almost confessed to it. 'Well, we're so right—we four together—just as we are. We're so safe. Come, don't spoil it.'