George opened his mouth to speak, but found that nothing came. It _was_ a regular job, it satisfied his ambitions, and her objections were inexplicable. He had shot his bolt and, having no more to say, he went, relapsing to such invertebracy that when he found that Mrs. Whitehead had not added the other blanket to his bed he had nothing to say to her either, but spread a threadbare overcoat on the coverlet and shivered unhappily to sleep. CHAPTER III--THE HELL-PIKE CLUB |TO a schoolboy of sixteen, love is an imbecile emotion, its victims harmless lunatics, and it is not to be supposed that Sam’s interest in the affair of Madge and George was based on intimate understanding. His conspiratorial action came rather as a lark: behind, perhaps, was the recognition that adults did habitually make fools of themselves in this way, that his loyalty in such a case was to Madge who was of his generation, and that Anne in obstructing their marriage was outrunning the constable in her demands for self-sacrifice on his behalf. Larking, defined as enjoyable interference with other people for motives either benevolent or purely egotistic, was a weakness of Samuel Branstone, and the boy was father to the man. He did not agree with Anne that the marriage was inimical to his interests. True, George cleaned windows and balanced hardily at the top of swaying ladders, a precarious trade, but his own. Apparently it suited the Georgian temperament, and that funambulist would not wear a placard on his back proclaiming that he was brother-in law to Branstone of the Classical Fifth. Branstone, who was going to rise in the world, would necessarily have poor relations, and it hardly mattered how poor. Indeed, the poorer they were the more cheaply he could afterwards play providence to them, since their standards would be low and their expectations small. So it wasn’t a nice, impulsive lark, but coldblooded and calculated, which is almost as objectionable in a lark as organization in Charity. It is prudent good intentions that pave the way to Hell. He saw that there was a difference between this and the elopements of that romantic literature with which he busied his relaxed hours: sometimes the lady, but always the lover, was enterprising, while he knew that George could never instigate anything. But that made things more amusing for Sam, who could pull strings with absolute assurance that his puppets would never take to dancing on their own account, or to any tune but the one he piped; and it is not given to all of us to be Omnipotence at the price of a ten-pound note. As always, Sam had luck. In the romantic elopements whose technique he began to study with new interest, money was never a difficulty, but the god in the machine of George Chappie’s elopement must put money in his purse, or there could be no elopement.