"What things?"

"Everything. My position. Austin's airy ways."

"But that's what makes him so charming."

"Yes, confound him. My ways are about as airy as a hippopotamus's. Look
here, Viviette. I'm fond of Austin, God knows--but all my life he has
been put in front of me. He has had all the chances; I've had none. With
my father when he was alive, with my mother, it has always been Austin
this and Austin that. He was the head of the school when I, the elder,
was a lout in the lower fourth. He had a brilliant University career and
went into the world and is making a fortune. I'm only able to ride and
shoot and do country things. I've stuck here with only this mortgaged
house belonging to me and the hundred or so a year I get out of the
tenants. I'm not even executor under my father's will. It's Austin.
Austin pays mother the money under her marriage settlement. If things go
wrong Austin is sent for to put them right. It never seems to occur to
him that it's my house. Oh, of course I know he pays the interest on the
mortgage and makes my mother an allowance--that's the humiliation
of it."

He sat with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, staring
at the grass.

"But surely you could find some work to do, Dick?"

He shrugged his great shoulders. "They stuck me once in an office in
London. I suffocated and added up things wrong and told the wrong lies
to the wrong people, and ended up by breaking the junior