And we sipped.

My father had quarrelled with his mother in an epoch when even musical comedies were unknown, and the quarrel had spread, as family quarrels do, like a fire or the measles.  The punching of my head by Sullivan in the extinct past had been one of its earliest consequences.

“May the earth lie lightly on them!” said Sullivan.

He was referring to the originators of the altercation.  The tone in which he uttered this wish pleased me—­it was so gentle.  It hinted that there was more in Sullivan than met the eye, though a great deal met the eye.  I liked him.  He awed me, and he also seemed to me somewhat ridiculous in his excessive pomp.  But I liked him.

The next instant we were talking about Sullivan Smith.  How he contrived to switch the conversation suddenly into that channel I cannot imagine.  Some people have a gift of conjuring with conversations.  They are almost always frankly and openly interested in themselves, as Sullivan was interested in himself.  You may seek to foil them; you may even violently wrench the conversation into other directions.  But every effort will be useless.  They will beat you.  You had much better lean back in your chair and enjoy their legerdemain.

In about two minutes Sullivan was in the very midst of his career.

“I never went in for high art, you know.  All rot!  I found I could write melodies that people liked and remembered.” (He was so used to reading interviews with himself in popular weeklies that he had caught the formalistic phraseology, and he was ready apparently to mistake even his cousin for an interviewer.  But I liked him.) “And I could get rather classy effects out of an orchestra.  And so I kept on.  I didn’t try to be Wagner.  I just stuck to Sullivan Smith.  And, my boy, let me tell you it’s only five years since ‘The Japanese Cat’ was produced, and I’m only twenty-seven, my boy!  And now, who is there that doesn’t know me?” He put his elbows on the onyx.  “Privately, between cousins, you know, I made seven thousand quid last year, and spent half that.  I live on half my income; always have done; always shall.  Good principle!  I’m a man of business, I am, Carl Foster.  Give the public what they want, and save half your income—­that’s the ticket.  Look at me.  I’ve got to act the duke; it pays, so I do it.  I am a duke.  I get twopence apiece royalty on my photographs.  That’s what you’ll never reach up to, not if you’re the biggest doctor in the world.”  He laughed.  “By the way, how’s Jem getting along?  Still practising at Totnes?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Doing well?”

“Oh!  So—­so!  You see, we haven’t got seven thousand a year, but we’ve got five hundred each, and Jem’s more interested in hunting than in doctoring.  He wants me to go into partnership with him.  But I don’t see myself.”

“Ambitious, eh, like I was?  Got your degree in Edinburgh?”

I nodded, but modestly disclaimed being ambitious like he was.