Millicent, however, was but moderately interested in this anecdote, and she wanted to know why people should like Mr Vetch’s fiddle any better. Then she added, “And I think that while he was about it he might have put you into something better than a bookbinder’s.”
“He wasn’t obliged to put me into anything. It’s a very good place.”
“All the same, it isn’t where I should have looked to find you,” Millicent declared, not so much in the tone of wishing to pay him a compliment as of resentment at having miscalculated.
“Where should you have looked to find me? In the House of Commons? It’s a pity you couldn’t have told me in advance what you would have liked me to be.”
She looked at him, over her cup, while she drank, in several sips. “Do you know what they used to say in the Place? That your father was a lord.”
“Very likely. That’s the kind of rot they talk in that precious hole,” the young man said, without blenching.
“Well, perhaps he was,” Millicent ventured.
“He may have been a prince, for all the good it has done me.”
“Fancy your talking as if you didn’t know!” said Millicent.
“Well, you _’ave_ got a temper!” the girl exclaimed, archly. “I should have thought you’d be a clerk at a banker’s.”
“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 inquired, 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 it. “Well, I’m sorry you’re only a journeyman,” she went on, pushing away her cup.
“So am I,” Hyacinth rejoined; but he called for the bill as if he had been an employer of labour. Then, while it was being brought, 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 retorted that she perfectly understood. “But the art of the binder is an exquisite art.”