"I can't help that; you must explain to them. My dear girl, there's such a lot at stake just now that I simply dare not leave it to chance. Come, come, be reasonable. One would think," and he smiled benevolently down upon her, "that we were a young couple like our turtle doves, and that one could not dine without the other. I admit that I shall not enjoy it so much."
"Now, how can I? Probably there isn't a man in London who is fonder of his home than I am, but at the same time one wants to do the right thing by one's home as well as to enjoy it."
"But, Alfred, you don't wish me to understand that the firm is in difficulties?"
"No, no, not in the sense you mean, but in another sense it is. The fact is, Queenie, I must stick to the ship now at whatever inconvenience to myself."
"Well, dearest, and to you. But, come now, you are a strong-minded woman, you know how many beans make five as well as any woman I have ever met--better than most. I've got myself tied up with the biggest ass in London, whether he's going out of his great mind, or whether he's going to continue on, a danger to everyone with whom he comes in touch, I don't know. The fact is, he's not mad enough to be shut up in a lunatic asylum and he's not sane enough to be allowed to come and go as he likes."
"But you took in Tomkinson to relieve you."
"And so he will in time, but he isn't the head of the firm and I am. He's a splendid man and I should have been furious if any other house in the same line had got hold of him; at the same time you can't expect a man to take my place in the first six months of becoming a partner; it wouldn't be reasonable, particularly as Chamberlain is such a difficult card to handle."
"Well, to-night I've got to dine possibly at the Criterion and talk over a business matter that Chamberlain has let himself in for, and which he is most anxious to get clear of with as little publicity and fuss as possible. Of course the situation with his wife is very difficult; she is a jealous, absurd, sensitive woman, and he makes her a shocking bad husband. It's a pity he was not born to be a clerk with a pound a week, to have to keep his nose down to the grindstone to provide board and lodging; then he would have managed to keep himself straight. I shall get things straightened out in a few months if I can manage it, and then we will take that trip South that we were talking about. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"