Lord Loveland Discovers America

								

Limericks. It was for your sake, and I hoped to win large sums. I
thought of lines all night long, and I did send in some splendid ones, a
thousand times better than those for which other people (dreadful
people, my dear, with names like Hogson, and Dobbs) have won hundreds of
pounds. I gave the editors permission to use my name, too; one would
have thought, a valuable advertisement for their papers. But all I've
won after the greatest efforts has been fifteen and six--an
insult--while these Dobbs and Hogsons--I believe the editors must be
Socialists. And--the shillings for the postal orders have counted up
into pounds. I am crushed with remorse."
"Never mind, dear, you meant it for the best," said Val, who cared more
for his mother than for anyone else in the world--except himself. And
that he made this exception was largely Lady Loveland's fault, for she
had brought him up to believe in but one person of paramount importance,
adorning the universe: Perceval George Victor Edward Gordon, thirteenth
Marquis of Loveland. "What would a few pounds matter--or a few hundreds
even, if you'd won them? The ship's too far under water to be raised
with Limericks."
"Dearest--is it as bad as that?"
"It's as bad as anything can be. Look out of your window at the snow
falling. Well, that's nothing to the way it's snowing bills outside my
window. If you and I can't think of something to clear the weather, I
shall have to chuck the army. And even if I do, the bills will still
keep on snowing."
"What horrible creatures tradesmen must be," said Lady Loveland, whose
opinions had come down to her crusted and spider-webbed from the cellars
of the Stone Age. "To think that we'd have had power of life and death
over them if we'd lived a few hundred years ago. I wish those times
could come back."
"The world at large doesn't agree with you."
"It oughtn't to be at large," replied Lady Loveland, without the
smallest idea of a joke. "It's reached a pretty pass when Worms who make
boots and uniforms and----"
"And sell wine----"
"Oh, if you like----"
"And jewellery----"
"Very well. Admit the jewellery----"
"And motors. I've wasted a good deal of substance in riotous motor-cars,
Mater."
"Oh, I suppose men of your position have some right to enjoy their
lives? As I was saying, it's come to a pretty pass when Worms who make
or sell what every gentleman must have--things that ought simply to
come, like the air you breathe--can turn and rend an officer of the
Guards, a peer of the realm, without fear of being crushed."
"If I'd chosen to be a kind of secret advertising agent for
tradespeople, I might have been dressed and wined for nothing,
motor-carred too, perhaps," said Loveland. "I know some fellows who do
go in for that sort of thing. But I'm hanged if I could. I'd rather blow
out my brains decently."
"Oh, my darling, don't speak so wildly," implored his mother. "There