t I had spread as a
cloth, pinning it down with four of the irregular, sun-heated flints
that lay loose on the turf all about us. I said: "I suppose you're
accustomed to have everything 'there' that you happen to want?"

"I am not," said the Honourable Jim. "But I'm accustomed to getting it
'there' one way or another."

"I see. Is there anything else that I ought to do for you that I've
forgotten?"

"There is. You haven't called me 'Sir,'" said the Honourable Jim. "I
like you to call me 'Sir.'"

Immediately I made up my mind that the word should never pass my lips to
him again.

But he went on eating heartily, chattering away between the
mouthfuls.... I scarcely know what the man said! But I suppose all kinds
of worthless people have that gift of making themselves "at home" in any
company they like, and of carrying on that flow of talk that they
contrive to make sound amusing, although it looks perfectly silly
written down....

One can't imagine anybody really sterling (like my Mr. Brace, for
example) exploiting a characteristic of this sort. The Honourable Jim is
"at" it the whole time. Just to keep his hand in, of course!

(I never cease to see through him.)

At last he finished lunching. He pulled out a very pretty platinum
cigarette-case.

(I wondered who he had "wangled" that out of.)

"Miss Lovelace, you don't smoke?"

"No, thank you. I don't."

"Ah! That's another pleasing thing about you, is it?"

This made me sorry I hadn't taken one of his horrid fat cigarettes.

I said: "I suppose you would think it unwomanly of me if I smoked?"

He laughed. "Child," he said, "you have the prettiest obsolete
vocabulary to be got anywhere outside Fielding. 'Unwomanly,' is it, to
smoke? I don't know; I only know that nine out of ten women do it so
badly I want to take the cigarette out of their fingers and pitch it
into the grate for them! Clouds of smoke they puff out straight into
your face till you'd think 'twas a fiery-breathing dragon in the room!
And staining their fingers to the knuckle as if they'd dipped them in
egg. And smothering themselves with the smell of it in a way no man
manages to do--why, by the scent you'd scarcely tell if it was hair
they'd got on their heads or the stuffing out of the smoking-room
cushions! I can't ever understand how they get any man to want to----"

Here he went off at a tangent.

"Don't let your young mistress learn the cigarette habit, will you? By
the way, y