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Why the Hell--"
"Thanks! I have all I want; sufficient to pay for the minor pleasures
of life."
"Such as?"
"A clean handkerchief now and then. I see no harm in dying poor."
"Where would I be, if my grandfather had seen no harm in it? Don't you
really believe that money sweetens all things, as Pepys says?"
The diarist was one of Keith's favourite authors. He called him a
representative Englishman and regretted that the type was becoming
extinct. Eames would reply:
"Your Pepys was a disgusting climber. He makes me ill with his
snobbishness and silver plate and monthly gloatings over his gains. I
wonder you can read the man. He may have been a capable official, but
he was not a gentleman."
"Have you ever seen a gentleman, except on a tailor's fashion-plate?"
"Yes. One, at all events; my father. However, we won't labour that
point; we have discussed it before, haven't we? Your money would
sweeten nothing for me. It would procure me neither health of body nor
peace of mind. Thanks all the same.


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