“I suppose so,” he said.  “Though for choice I’d like to be one of the Idle Rich.  To my mind the ideal profession is strolling into the office and touching the old dad for another thousand.”

Ann was severe.

“You revolt me!” she said.  “I never heard anything so thoroughly disgraceful.  You need work!”

“One of these days,” said Jimmy plaintively, “I shall be sitting by the roadside with my dinner-pail, and you will come by in your limousine, and I shall look up at you and say ’You hounded me into this!’ How will you feel then?”

“Very proud of myself.”

“In that case, there is no more to be said.  I’d much rather hang about and try to get adopted by a millionaire, but if you insist on my working—­Waiter!”

“What do you want?” asked Ann.

“Will you get me a Classified Telephone Directory,” said Jimmy.

“What for?” asked Ann.

“To look for a profession.  There is nothing like being methodical.”

The waiter returned, bearing a red book.  Jimmy thanked him and opened it at the A’s.

“The boy, what will he become?” he said.  He turned the pages.  “How about an Auditor?  What do you think of that?”

“Do you think you could audit?”

“That I could not say till I had tried.  I might turn out to be very good at it.  How about an Adjuster?”

“An adjuster of what?”

“The book doesn’t say.  It just remarks broadly—­in a sort of spacious way—­’Adjuster.’  I take it that, having decided to become an adjuster, you then sit down and decide what you wish to adjust.  One might, for example, become an Asparagus Adjuster.”

“A what?”

“Surely you know?  Asparagus Adjusters are the fellows who sell those rope-and-pulley affairs by means of which the Smart Set lower asparagus into their mouths—­or rather Francis the footman does it for them, of course.  The diner leans back in his chair, and the menial works the apparatus in the background.  It is entirely superseding the old-fashioned method of picking the vegetable up and taking a snap at it.  But I suspect that to be a successful Asparagus Adjuster requires capital.  We now come to Awning Crank and Spring Rollers.  I don’t think I should like that.  Rolling awning cranks seems to me a sorry way of spending life’s springtime.  Let’s try the B’s.”

“Let’s try this omelette.  It looks delicious.”  Jimmy shook his head.

“I will toy with it—­but absently and in a distrait manner, as becomes a man of affairs.  There’s nothing in the B’s.  I might devote my ardent youth to Bar-Room Glassware and Bottlers’ Supplies.  On the other hand, I might not.  Similarly, while there is no doubt a bright future for somebody in Celluloid, Fiberloid, and Other Factitious Goods, instinct tells me that there is none for—­” he pulled up on the verge of saying, “James Braithwaite Crocker,” and shuddered at the nearness of the pitfall. “—­for—­” he hesitated again—­“for Algernon Bayliss,” he concluded.