“Can’t you see the dishonor of what you’ve done?” he said impatiently. “You coax and persecute Otterbourne until he allows you to take those new people to his house, and then you let the cad you take there make your husband a director of a bank of which the man is chairman! Can’t you see to what comment you expose us all? Of what wretched manœuvring you make us all look guilty? Have you any perception, no conscience, no common decency? If Cocky were another kind of man than he is, such a thing would look a job. But being what he is, the transaction is something still more infamous.” She listened, so much amused, that she really could scarcely feel angry. “My dear Ronald,” she said very impertinently, “you have a morality altogether of your own; it is so extremely old-fashioned that you can’t expect anybody to make themselves ridiculous by adopting it. As for ‘a job,’ isn’t the whole of government a job? When you’ve cleaned out Downing Street it will be time to bring your brooms in here.” At that moment Cocky put his head in between the door-curtains and nodded to Hurstmanceaux. “She’s made me a guinea-pig, Ronnie,” he said, with his little thin laugh. “Didn’t think I should take to business, did you? Have you seen the papers? Lord, they’re such fun! I’ve bought ten copies of _Truth_.” His wife laughed. “It’s no use reading _Truth_ to Ronnie. He’s no sense of fun; he never had.” “I have some sense of shame,” replied Hurstmanceaux, looking with loathing on his brother-in-law’s thin, colorless, grinning face. “It is an old-fashioned thing; but if this wretched little cur were not too feeble for a man to touch, I would teach him some respect for it with a hunting-crop.” Then he pushed past Cocky, who was still between the door-curtains, and went downstairs to take his way to Otterbourne House. Cocky laughed shrilly and gleefully. “Jove! what a wax he’s in,” said Cocky, greatly diverted. “Just as if he didn’t know us by this time!” “He is always so absurd,” replied Mouse. “He has no common sense and no perception.” “He ought to go about in chain armor,” said Cocky, picking up _Truth_ and reading for the fourth time, with infinite relish, the description of himself as an “Hereditary Legislator in Mincing Lane.” “I am not a hereditary legislator yet,” he said as he read. “As I don’t get the halfpence, why should I get the kicks? That’s what I said to the mob in the park. Break the pater’s windows, don’t break mine. I’m plain John Orme, without a shilling to bless myself with, and the beggars cheered me! They’ll cheer you for any rot if they’re only in the mood for it; and if they aren’t in the mood, you might talk like Moses and Mahomet, they’d bawl you down--oh, get out you little beasts, damn you!” This objurgation was addressed to the Blenheims, who, suddenly becoming aware of his presence, made for his trousers with that conviction that his immediate destruction would be a public service, which they shared with the editor of _Truth_.