"Something will turn up," he predicted. Then, perhaps, he saw how his refusal was paining me, for he added: "I've fixed up with some fellows weeks ago that we'd all meet and see life." ... I had already begun a letter to Lady Erskine, asking if we might postpone our visit for a day or two, when Will came in--very much upset--to say that his friends had broken faith with him; one had already gone to the country, the other two were busy presenting letters of introduction and arranging interviews... As if I had not known all along that, the moment war was over, the whole world would begin looking for jobs... "_Now_," I said, "you can have no objection to accepting the Erskines' invitation." "Barring that I don't want to go," Will rejoined. "I draw the line at Jews at all times and I don't in the least want to start work till I've had a holiday." "But others are already in the field," I urged. Lady Maitland shewed the sublime assurance to reestablish communications and to ask Sir Adolphus, in the name of their _old friendship_, to find an opening for her second boy! "You can have all the holidays you want later." To my delight I saw Will weakening. "What's the management like?," he asked. "Oh, my dear, everything is incredibly perfect. The house, the food, the music--" "You may 'ave the music--fer me," said Will. (It was some allusion which I did not understand.) "Oh, all right! I'll come. But I intend to have my fun out of it." You have stayed at Rock Hill? No? Well, I am not exaggerating when I use the word "perfection." A seventeenth-century Italian palace with gardens that put Cheniston and my brother-in-law Spenworth to _shame_; pictures that one somehow always thought were in the National Gallery... And, if you care for material comfort, as--I am not ashamed to say--I _do_, not having enjoyed enough of it to become _blasée_... "If you cannot be rich yourself, know plenty of rich people," as Will said the first night... In jest, of course... If I wanted to make a criticism, I should say that Lady Erskine might have chosen her party on less catholic lines. As patron of the arts, Sir Adolphus is of course brought into contact with an entire world of artists, musicians, actors and the like which is outside my ken. He confessed that he liked "mixing people up" and trying to break down the very rigid barriers which separate the artistic people from the rest of us. I have not the slightest objection to that _on principle_, but, when it necessitates meeting a number of half-naked young actresses who truly honestly have no place in the artistic or any other world... And when they are allowed to set the tone of the house...