and what on earth you hang about with so many different sorts of idiots
for I don't know.... I think, if circumstances absolutely compelled me to
make bosom friends of either, I should choose the under-bred poor rather
than the over-bred rich. That's the sort of man I've no use for. The sort
of man with so much money that he has to chuck it all about the place to
get rid of it. The sort of man who talks to you about beagles. The sort
of man who has a different fancy waistcoat for each day of the week."

"Well," said Peter, "that's nice. I wish I had."

His friend turned a grave regard on him. "The sort of man who rides a
motor-bicycle.... You really should, Margery," he went on, "learn to be
more fastidious. You mustn't let yourself be either dazzled by fancy
waistcoats or sympathetically moved by unclean collars. Neither is
interesting."

"I never said they were," Peter said. "It's the people inside them...."

Peter, in brief, was a lover of his kind, and the music life played to
him was of a varied and complex nature. But, looking back, it was easy to
see how there had been, running through all the variations, a dominant
motive in the piece.

As Peter listened to the boiling of his egg, and thought how hard it
would be when he took it off, the dominant motive came in and stood by
the fire, and looked down on Peter. He jingled things in his pockets and
swayed to and fro on his heels like his uncle Evelyn, and he was slim in
build, and fair and pale and clear-cut of face, and gentle and rather
indifferent in manner, and soft and casual in voice, and he was in his
fourth year, and life went extremely well with him.