'It's what you've not done. Why can't you exert yourself and make
some money?'

Lord Dawlish groaned a silent groan. By a devious route, but with
unfailing precision, they had come homing back to the same old
subject.

'We have been engaged for six months, and there seems about as
much chance of our ever getting married as of--I can't think of
anything unlikely enough. We shall go on like this till we're
dead.'

'But, my dear girl!'

'I wish you wouldn't talk to me as if you were my grandfather.
What were you going to say?'

'Only that we can get married this afternoon if you'll say the
word.'

'Oh, don't let us go into all that again! I'm not going to marry
on four hundred a year and spend the rest of my life in a pokey
little flat on the edge of London. Why can't you make more money?'

'I did have a dash at it, you know. I waylaid old Bodger--Colonel
Bodger, on the committee of the club, you know--and suggested over
a whisky-and-soda that the management of Brown's would be behaving
like sportsmen if they bumped my salary up a bit, and the old boy
nearly strangled himself trying to suck down Scotch and laugh at