Page:Zangwill-King of schnorrers.djvu/235

Rh As if Jones would dare do anything you hadn't told him. We are his slaves. But you? Why, he hangs on your words!"

"D him! I should like to see him hanging on something higher!" I cried.

"Yes, your language is low," admitted the Infant. "But, seriously, what's all the row about? I thought this champagne lunch was a bit of realism, just to start off with."

I explained briefly how Jones had coiled himself around me, even as they had described. The dado echoed their ribald laughter.

"Oh, well," said the Infant, "it's only right you should give a lunch the day you come into a peerage. It's really too much to expect us to pay scot, when there was a beautiful lunch of cold beef and pickles waiting for us in the dining-room, and included in our terms per week. We aren't going to pay for two lunches."

"I don't mind the lunch," I said, smiling, my sense of humour returning now that I had poured forth my grievance. "I'd gladly give you chaps a lunch any day, and I'm pleased you enjoyed it so much. But, for the rest, I'm going to run this joke by syndicate, or not at all. I only came down with a tenner."

"A pound a day!" said Towers, "that ought to be enough."

"Why, there's a pound gone bang over this lunch already!" I retorted.

"And then there's the apartments," put in the Infant roguishly. "I wonder what they'll tot up to? "

"Jones alone knows," I groaned.

He came in—a veritable devil—while his name was on my lips, with a new box of cigarettes.

"Clear away!" I said briefly.