I was not aware of being the least bit funny.

“But, seriously,” she continued, “you must marry.”  She is a woman who has an irritating way of speaking in Italics.  “Are you aware that if you have no son the title will become extinct?”

“And if it does,” I cried, “who on this earth will care a half-penny-bun?”

I am growing tired of the title.  At first it was rather amusing.  Now it appears it is registered in Heaven’s chancery and hedged about with divine ordinances.  Only the other day an unknown parson requested me to open a church bazaar, and I gathered he had received his instructions direct from the Almighty.

“Why, every one would care,” exclaimed my aunt, genuinely shocked.  “It would be monstrous.  You owe it to your descendants as well as to your ancestors.  Besides,” she added, with apparent irrelevance, “a man in your position ought to live up to it.”

“I do,” said I, “just up to it.”

“Now you are pretending you don’t understand me.  You ought to marry money!”

I smiled and shook my head.  I don’t think my aunt likes me to smile and shake my head, for I saw a flicker in her eyes.  “No, my dear aunt; emphatically no.  It would be comfortless.  If I kissed it, it would be cold.  If I put my arms round it, it would be full of sharp edges which would hurt.  If I tried to get any emotion out of it, it would only jingle.”

“What do you want then?”

“Nothing.  But if I must—­let it be plain flesh and blood.”

“Cannibal!” said my aunt.

We both laughed.

“But you can have plenty of flesh and blood, with money as well, for the asking,” she insisted; and thereupon my two cousins, Dora and Gwendolen, entered the drawingroom and interrupted the conversation.  They are both bouncing, fresh-faced girls, in the early twenties.  They ride and shoot and bicycle and golf and dance, and the elder writes little stories for the magazines.  As I do none of these things, I am convinced they regard me as a poor sort of creature.  When they hand me a cup of tea I almost expect them to pat me on the head and say, “Good dog!” I am long, lean, stooping, hatchet-faced, hawknosed, near-sighted.  I have not the breezy air of the jolly young stockbrokers they are in the habit of meeting.  They rather alarm me.  Moreover, they have managed to rear a colossal pile of wholly incorrect information on every subject under the sun, and are addicted to letting chunks of it fall about one’s ears.  This stuns me, rendering conversation difficult.

As I had not seen Dora since her return from Rome, where she had spent the early spring, I asked, in some trepidation, for her impressions.  Before I could collect myself, I was listening to a lecture on St. Peter’s.  She told me it was built by Michael Angelo.  I suggested that some credit might be given to Bramante, not to speak of Rosellino, Baldassare Peruzzi and the two San Gallo’s.