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Mammon and Co.
Mammon and Co
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
THE CITY DINNER
"Egotism is certainly the first," said Lady Conybeare with admirable firmness; "and your inclination towards your neighbour is the second."
Now, this was the sort of thing which Alice Haslemere liked; and she stopped abruptly in the middle of her rather languishing conversation with nobody in particular to ask for explanations. It sounded promising.
"The first what, and the second what, Kit?" she inquired.
"The first and the second lessons," said Lady Conybeare promptly. "The first and the second social virtues, if you are particular. I am going to set up a school for the propagation of social virtues, where I shall teach the upper classes to be charming. There shall be a special class for royalty."
Lady Haslemere was not generally known as being particularly particular, but she took her stand on Kit's conditional, and defended it.
"There is nothing like particularity – nothing," she said earnestly, with a sort of missionary zeal to disagree with somebody; "though some people try to get on without it."
Being a great friend of Kit's, she knew that it was sufficient for her to state a generality of any kind to get it contradicted. She was not wrong in this instance. Kit sighed with the air of a woman who meant to do her unpleasant duty like a sister and a Christian.
"Dear Alice," she said, "there is nothing so thoroughly irritating as particularity. I am not sure what you mean by it, but I suppose you allude either to people who are prudes or to people who are always letting fly precise information at one. They always want it back too. Don't you know how the people who insist on telling one the exact time are just those who ask one for the exact time. I never know the exact time, and I never want to be told it. And I hate a prudish woman," she concluded with emphasis, "as much as I abhor a well-informed man."
"Put it the other way round," said Lady Haslemere, "and I agree with you. I loathe a prudish man, and I detest a well-informed woman."
"There aren't any of either," said Lady Conybeare.