CHAPTER XXII

Sir James Chide was giving tea to a couple of guests at Lytchett Manor.  It was a Saturday in late September.  The beech-trees visible through the drawing-room windows were still untouched and heavily green; but their transformation was approaching.  Soon, steeped in incredible splendors of orange and gold, they would stand upon the leaf-strewn grass, waiting for the night of rain or the touch of frost which should at last disrobe them.

“If you imagine, Miss Ettie,” said Sir James, severely, to a young lady beside him, “that I place the smallest faith in any of Bobbie’s remarks or protestations—­”

The girl addressed smiled into his face, undaunted.  She was a small elfish creature with a thin face, on the slenderest of necks.  But in her queer little countenance a pair of laughing eyes, out of all proportion to the rest of her for loveliness and effect, gave her and kept her the attention of the world.  They lent distinction—­fascination even—­to a character of simple virtues and girlish innocence.

Bobbie lounged behind her chair, his arms on the back of it.  He took Sir James’s attack upon him with calm.  “Shall I show him the letter of my beastly chairman?” he said, in the girl’s ear.

She nodded, and Bobbie drew from his breast-pocket a folded sheet of blue paper, and pompously handed it to Sir James.

The letter was from the chairman of a leading bank in Berlin—­a man well known in European finance.  It was couched in very civil terms, and contained the offer to Mr. Robert Forbes of a post in the Lindner bank, as an English correspondence clerk, at a salary in marks which, when translated, meant about L140 a year.

Sir James read it, and handed it back.  “Well, what’s the meaning of that?”

“I’m giving up the Foreign Office,” said Bobbie, an engaging openness of manner.  “It’s not a proper place for a young man.  I’ve learned nothing there but a game we do with Blue-Books, and things you throw at the ceiling—­where they stick—­I’ll tell you about it presently.  Besides, you see, I must have some money, and it don’t grow in the Foreign Office for people like me.  So I went to my uncle, Lord Forestier—­”

“Of course!” growled Sir James.  “I thought we should come to the uncles before long.  Miss Wilson, I desire to warn you against marrying a young man of ‘the classes.’  They have no morals, but they have always uncles.”

Miss Wilson’s eyes shot laughter at her fiance.  “Go on, Bobbie, and don’t make it too long!”

“I decline to be hustled.”  Bobbie’s tone was firm, though urbane.  “I repeat:  I went to my uncle.  And I said to him, like the unemployed:  ‘Find me work, and none of your d——­d charity!’”

“Which means, I suppose, that the last time you went to him, you borrowed fifty pounds?” said Sir James.