Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/397

Rh “What do you envy me, exactly?” he asked laughing always at her whimsical way.

“Your smoke room. The way you see life—or the way you hear it, rather.”

“But I should have thought you saw life ten times more than me,” he replied.

“I! I only see manners—good manners and bad manners. You know ‘manners maketh a man.’ That’s when a woman’s there. But you wait awhile, you’ll see.”

“When shall I see?” asked George, flattered and interested.

“When you have made the fortune you talked about,” she replied.

He was uplifted by her remembering the things he had said.

“But when I have made it—when!”—he said sceptically,—“even then—well, I shall only be, or have been, landlord of ‘Ye Kamme Inne.’&thinsp;” He looked at her, waiting for her to lift up his hopes with her gay balloons.

“Oh, that doesn’t matter! Leslie might be landlord of some Ram Inn when he’s at home, for all anybody would know—mightn’t you, hubby, dear?”

“Thanks!” replied Leslie, with good humoured sarcasm.

“You can’t tell a publican from a peer, if he’s a rich publican,” she continued. “Money maketh the man, you know.”

“Plus manners,” added George, laughing.

“Oh they are always there—where I am. I give you ten years. At the end of that time you must