Peter took it off and fished it out with a spoon, and began rummaging for an egg-cup and salt and marmalade and buns in the locker beneath his window seat.  Having found these things, he composed himself in the fat arm-chair to dine, with a sigh of satisfaction.

“You slacker,” Urquhart observed.  “Well, can you come to-morrow?  The drag starts at eleven.”

“It’s quite hard,” said Peter, unreasonably disappointed in it.  “Oh, yes, rather; I’ll come.”  How short the time for doing things had suddenly become.

Urquhart remarked, looking at the carpet, “What a revolting mess.  Why?”

“My self-filling bath,” Peter explained.  “I invented it myself.  Well—­it did fill itself.  Quite suddenly and all at once, you know.  It was a very beautiful sight.  But rather unrestrained at present.  I must improve it....  Oh, this is my last term.”

“Sent down?” Urquhart sympathetically enquired.  It was what one might expect to happen to Peter.

“Destitute,” Peter told him.  “The Robinsons have it practically all.  Hilary told me to-day.  I am thrown on the world.  I shall have to work.  Hilary is destitute too, and Peggy has nothing to spend, and the babies insist on bathing in the canals.  Bad luck for us, isn’t it.  Oh, and Hilary is going to edit a magazine called ‘The Gem,’ for your uncle in Venice.  That seems rather a nice plan.  The question is, what am I to apply my great gifts to?”

Urquhart whistled softly.  “As bad as all that, is it?”

“Quite as bad.  Worse if anything....  The only thing in careers that I can fancy at the moment is art dealing—­picking up nice things cheap and selling them dear, you know.  Only I should always want to keep them, of course.  If I don’t do that I shall have to live by my needle.  If they pass the Sweated Industries Bill, I suppose one will get quite a lot.  It’s the only Bill I’ve ever been interested in.  My uncle was extremely struck by the intelligent way I took notice of it, when I had disappointed him so much about Tariff Reform and Education.”

“You’d probably be among the unskilled millions whom the bill turns out of work.”

“Then I shall be unemployed, and march with a flag.  I shall rather like that....  Oh, I suppose somehow one manages to live, doesn’t one, whether one has a degree or not.  And personally I’d rather not have one, because it would be such a mortifying one.  Besides,” Peter added, after a luminous moment of reflection, “I don’t believe a degree really matters much, in my profession.  You didn’t know I had a profession, I expect; I’ve just thought of it.  I’m going to be a buyer for the Ignorant Rich.  Make their houses liveable-in.  They tell me what they want—­I get hold of it for them.  Turn them out an Italian drawing-room—­Della Robbia mantel-piece, Florentine fire-irons, Renaissance ceiling, tapestries and so on.  Things they haven’t energy to find for themselves or intelligence to know when they see them.  I love finding them, and I’m practised at cheating.  One has to cheat if one’s poor but eager....  A poor trade, but my own.  I can grub about low shops all day, and go to sales at Christie’s.  What fun.”