"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Launched now upon a business venture that would require my unremitting
attention if it were to prosper, it may be imagined that I had little
leisure for the social vagaries of the Honourable George, shocking as
these might be to one's finer tastes. And yet on the following morning
I found time to tell him what. To put it quite bluntly, I gave him
beans for his loose behaviour the previous evening, in publicly ogling
and meeting as an equal one whom one didn't know.
To my amazement, instead of being heartily ashamed of his
licentiousness, I found him recalcitrant. Stubborn as a mule he was
and with a low animal cunning that I had never given him credit for.
"Demosthenes was the son of a cutler," said he, "and Napoleon worked
on a canal-boat, what? Didn't you say so yourself, you juggins, what?
Fancy there being upper and lower classes among natives! What rot! And
I like North America. I don't mind telling you straight I'm going to
take it up."
Horrified by these reckless words, I could only say "Noblesse oblige,"
meaning to convey that whatever the North Americans did, the next Earl
of Brinstead must not meet persons one doesn't know, whereat he
rejoined tartly that I was "to stow that piffle!"
Being now quite alarmed, I took the further time to call upon
Belknap-Jackson, believing that he, if any one, could recall the
Honourable George to his better nature.
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