‘My cousin, Dick Westbury, went in Ben’s place,’ he said;--‘the very sort of fellow to make a merchant of. You might as well tell me to go and stand on my head.’
‘If I could make all the money by it that those fellows do, I should not mind standing on my head,’ said Laurie’s counsellor, reprovingly. ‘Why shouldn’t you be “the very sort” as well? I don’t see that any particular talent is required. A good head, sir, and close attention, and a knowledge of the multiplication-table. But perhaps they did not teach you that at Eton?’ Mr. Welby added, with a gentle sneer, such as he loved.
‘If they did, I have forgotten it years ago,’ said Laurie. ‘Indeed it would not do. You know it would not do. A fellow has to be brought up to it; and besides, I shouldn’t go if I were asked,’ he added, with a sudden cloud on his face.
‘That settles the question,’ said his adviser. ‘You are a fool, my dear fellow; but I thought as much. Well, then, there are all the Government offices;--couldn’t your friends get you into one of them? The very thing for you, sir. Not too much to do, and plenty of time to do it in. You could keep up your studio still.’
‘But you forget the competitive examination,’ cried Laurie, just as his brother Ben had replied to a similar suggestion. ‘I don’t know Julius Cæsar from Adam,’ he said, laughing. ‘I have not an idea which Göthe it was that discovered printing. I can’t tell whereabouts are the Indian Isles. They’d pluck me as fast as look at me. You forget that we’re high-minded, and that influence is no good now.’
‘Confound it!’ said Mr. Welby, with energy, pausing to find something else more feasible. Then he bent confidentially across the table, coaxing, almost appealing, to his intractable neophyte. ‘My dear fellow, what do you say to literature?’ said the R.A. in his softest tone. Upon which Laurie burst into uncontrollable laughter.
‘I see no occasion for laughter,’ the Academician continued, half offended. ‘Why shouldn’t you write as well as another? I assure you, sir, I know half-a-dozen men who write, and they have not an ounce of brains among them. All you require is the knack of it. They tell me they make heaps of money; and it does not matter what lies you tell, or how much idiocy you give vent to,--especially about art,’ he said, with sudden fierceness. ‘And, to be sure, in this beautiful age of ours everybody reads. I don’t see why you should not go in for the newspapers or the magazines, or something. There is no study wanted for that; there’s the beauty of it. The more nonsense you talk the more people like it. And so far as I can see, it’s as easy to talk nonsense on paper as in company; easier, indeed, for there’s nobody to contradict you. All you want is the knack. I know the editor of the “Sword,” my dear fellow. I’ll get you an engagement on that.’