“Well, perhaps he was,” Millicent ventured. “He may have been a prime-minister for all the good it has done me.” “Fancy your talking as if you didn’t know!” said Millicent. “Finish your tea—don’t mind how I talk.” “Well, you _’ave_ got a temper!” she archly retorted. “I should have thought you’d be a clerk at a banker’s.” “Do they select them for their tempers?” “You know what I mean. You used to be too clever to follow a trade.” “Well, I’m not clever enough to live on air.” “You might be, really, for all the tea you drink! Why didn’t you go in for some high profession?” “How was I to go in? Who the devil was to help me?” Hyacinth asked with a certain vibration. “Haven’t you got any relations?” said Millicent after a moment. “What are you doing? Are you trying to make me swagger?” When he spoke sharply she only laughed, not in the least ruffled, and by the way she looked at him seemed to like the effect. “Well, I’m sorry you’re only a journeyman,” she went on as she pushed away her cup. “So am I,” Hyacinth answered; but he called for the bill as if he had been an employer of labour. Then while they waited he remarked to his companion that he didn’t believe she had an idea of what his work was and how charming it could be. “Yes, I get up books for the shops,” he said when she had asserted that she perfectly understood. “But the art of the binder’s an exquisite art.” “So Miss Pynsent told me. She said you had some samples at home. I should like to see them.” “You wouldn’t know how good they are,” he finely smiled. He expected she would exclaim in answer that he was an impudent wretch, and for a moment she seemed on the point of doing so. But the words changed on her lips and she replied almost tenderly: “That’s just the way you used to speak to me years ago in the Plice.” “I don’t care about that. I hate all that time.” “Oh, so do I, if you come to that,” said Millicent as if she could rise to any breadth of view. With which she returned to her idea that he had not done himself justice. “You used always to have your nose in something or other. I never thought you’d work with your ’ands.” This seemed to irritate him, and, having paid the bill and given threepence, ostentatiously, to the young woman with a languid manner and hair of an unnatural yellow who had waited on them, he said: “You may depend upon it I shan’t do it an hour longer than I can help.” “What will you do then?” “Oh, you’ll see some day.” In the street, after they had begun to walk again, he went on: “You speak as if I could have my pick. What was an obscure little beggar to do, buried in a squalid corner of London under a million of idiots? I had no help, no influence, no acquaintance of any kind with professional people, and no means of getting at them. I had to do something; I couldn’t go on living on Pinnie. Thank God I help her now a little. I took what I could get.” He spoke as if he had been touched by the imputation of having derogated.