Crocker.
"Please listen to what I am saying, Bingley. I am talking about
James. There is a crude American strain in him which seems to
grow worse instead of better. I was lunching with the Delafields
at the Carlton yesterday, and there, only a few tables away, was
James with an impossible young man in appalling clothes. It was
outrageous that James should have been seen in public at all with
such a person. The man had a broken nose and talked through it.
He was saying in a loud voice that made everybody turn round
something about his left-scissors hook--whatever that may have
been. I discovered later that he was a low professional pugilist
from New York--a man named Spike Dillon, I think Captain Wroxton
said. And Jimmy was giving him lunch--at the _Carlton!_"
Mr. Crocker said nothing. Constant practice had made him an adept
at saying nothing when his wife was talking.
"James must be made to realise his responsibilities. I shall have
to speak to him. I was hearing only the other day of a most
deserving man, extremely rich and lavishly generous in his
contributions to the party funds, who was only given a
knighthood, simply because he had a son who had behaved in a
manner that could not possibly be overlooked. The present Court
is extraordinarily strict in its views. James cannot be too
careful. A certain amount of wildness in a young man is quite
proper in the best set, provided that he is wild in the right
company.
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