But
for all his sanity Lewie has many cranks, and a woman might get him on
that side."
"Don't talk of it. I can picture the horrid reality. He will marry
some thin-lipped creature who will back him in all his madness, and his
friends will have to bid him a reluctant farewell. Or, worse still,
there are scores of gushing, sentimental girls who might capture him. I
wish old Wratislaw were here to ask him what he thinks, for he knows
Lewie better than any of us. Is he a member here?"
"Oh yes, he is a member, but I don't think he comes much. You people
are too frivolous for him."
"Well, that is all the good done by subscribing to a news-cutting agency
for news of one's friends. I feel as low as ditch water. There is that
idiot who goes off to the ends of the earth for three years, and when he
comes back his friends get no good of him for the confounded women."
George echoed the ancient complaint which is doubtless old as David and
Jonathan.
Then these two desolated young men, in view of their friend's defection,
were full of sad memories, much as relations after a funeral hymn the
acts of the deceased.
George lit a cigar and smoked it savagely. "So that is the end of
Lewis! And to think I knew the fool at school and college and couldn't
make a better job of him than this! Do you remember, John, how we used
to call him 'Vaulting Ambition,' because he won the high jump and was a
cocky beggar in general?"
"And do you remember when he got his First, and they wanted him to stand
for a fellowship, but he was keen to get out of England and travel? Do
you remember that last night at Heston, when he told us all he was going
to do, and took a bet with Wratislaw about it?"
It is probable that this sad elegy would have continued for hours, had
not a servant approached with letters, which he distributed, two to
Arthur Mordaunt and one to Mr.
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