He and Urquhart and Lucy all knew how to live.  They made good use of most of the happy resources that London offers to its inhabitants.  They went in steamers to and fro between Putney and Greenwich, listening to concertinas and other instruments of music.  They looked at many sorts of pictures, talked to many sorts of people, and attended many sorts of plays.  Urquhart and Peter had even become associates of the Y.M.C.A. (representing themselves as agnostics seeking for light) on account of the swimming-baths.  As Peter remarked, “Christian Young Men do not bathe very much, and it seems a pity no one should.”  On the day when they had tea at the White City, they had all had lunch at a very recherche cafe in Soho, where the Smart Set like to meet Bohemians, and you can only get in by being one or the other, so Peter and Lucy went as the Smart Set, and Urquhart as a Bohemian, and they liked to meet each other very much.

The only drawback to Peter’s life was the bronchitis that sprang at him out of the fogs and temporarily stopped work.  He had just recovered from an attack of it on the day when he was having tea at the White City, and he looked a weak and washed-out rag, with sunken blue eyes smiling out of a very white face.

“You would think, to look at him,” Urquhart said to Lucy, “that he had been going in extensively for the flip-flap this afternoon.  It’s a pity Stephen can’t see you, Margery; you look starved enough to satisfy even him.  You never come across Stephen now, I suppose?  You wouldn’t, of course.  He has no opinion of the Ignorant Rich.  Nor even of the well-informed rich, like me.  He’s blindly prejudiced in favour of the Ignorant Poor.”

Lucy nodded.  “I know.  He’s nice to me always.  I go and play my ’cello to his friends.”

“I always keep him in mind,” said Peter, “for the day when my patrons get tired of me.  I know Rodney will be kind to me directly I take to street peddling or any other thoroughly ill-bred profession.  The kind he despises most, I suppose, are my dear Ignorant Rich—­the ill-bred but by no means breadless. (That’s my own and not very funny, by the way.) Did I tell you, Denis, that Leslie is going to begin educating the People in Appreciation of Objects of Art?  Isn’t it a nice idea?  I’m to help.  Leslie’s a visionary, you know.  I believe plutocrats often are.  They’ve so much money and are so comfortable that they stop wanting material things and begin dreaming dreams.  I should dream dreams if I was a plutocrat.  As it is my mind is earthly.  I don’t want to educate anyone.  Well, anyhow we’re going to Italy in the spring, to pick things up, as Leslie puts it.  That always sounds so much as if we didn’t pay for them.  Then we shall bring them home and have free exhibits for the Ignorant Poor, and I shall give free and instructive lectures.  Isn’t it a pleasant plan?  We’re going to Venice.  There’s a Berovieri goblet that some Venetian count has, that Leslie’s set his heart on.  We are to acquire it, regardless of expense, if it turns out to be all that is rumoured.”