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have not been quite--the fault was mine. I have always endeavored to do my duty. It is a difficult task to look after a young man of your age--" His lordship's sense of his grievance made him eloquent. "Dash it all!" he cried. "That's just what I jolly well complain of. Who the dickens wanted you to look after me? Hang it, you've kept your eye on me all these years like a frightful policeman! You cut off my allowance right in the middle of my time at college, just when I needed it most, and I had to come and beg for money whenever I wanted to buy a cigarette. I looked a fearful ass, I can tell you! Men who knew me used to be dashed funny about it. I'm sick of the whole bally business. You've given me a jolly thin time all this while, and now I'm going to get a bit of my own back. Wouldn't you, Pitt, old man?" Jimmy, thus suddenly appealed to, admitted that, in his lordship's place, he might have experienced a momentary temptation to do something of the kind. "Of course," said his lordship; "any fellow would." "But, Spencer, let met--" "You've soured my life," said his lordship, frowning a tense, Byronic frown. "That's what you've done--soured my whole bally life. I've had a rotten time. I've had to go about touching my friends for money to keep me going. Why, I owe you a fiver, don't I, Pitt, old man?" It was a tenner, to be finnickingly accurate about details, but Jimmy did not say so. He concluded, rightly, that the memory of the original five pounds which he had lent Lord Dreever at the Savoy Hotel had faded from the other's mind. "Don't mention it," he said. "But I do mention it," protested his lordship, shrilly. "It just proves what I say. If I had had a decent allowance, it wouldn't have happened. And you wouldn't give me enough to set me going in the diplomatic service. That's another thing. Why wouldn't you do that?" Sir Thomas pulled himself together. "I hardly thought you qualified, my dear boy--" His lordship did not actually foam at the mouth, but he looked as if he might do so at any moment. Excitement and the memory of his wrongs, lubricated, as it were, by the champagne he had consumed both at and after dinner, had produced in him a frame of mind far removed from the normal. His manners no longer had that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere. He waved his hands: "I know, I know!" he shouted. "I know you didn't. You thought me a fearful fool. I tell you, I'm sick of
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