"Why not? Oh, I see. Thanks. But I should like to be able to bathe from a breakwater, and buy crabs from fishermen, and have very short, untidy straight-up hair, and a profession, Toby."
"Yes," said Toby, wincing, for he knew or suspected what was coming.
"Don't say 'yes' like that. Say it as if you meant it."
Toby took a long breath, and shut his eyes.
"Yes, so help me God!" he said, very loud.
"That's better. Well, Toby, I want you--I really want you--to have a real profession. What is the use of your being secretary to your cousin? I don't believe you could say the names of the men in the Cabinet, and, as you once told me yourself, all you ever do there is to play stump-cricket in the secretary's room."
"You should have warned me that whatever I said would be used against me," said the injured Toby. "But I saw after the flowers in Hyde Park last year."
"The work of a life-time," said Lily. "I wonder they don't offer you a peerage."
"Very poor, and who made it? Besides, I think you are being sarcastic about the flowers in Hyde Park. If there's one thing I hate," said Toby violently, "it is cheap sarcasm."
"Who wouldn't be sarcastic when a great tousle-headed, able-bodied, freckle-faced scion of the aristocracy tells one that he is employed--employed, mark you--in looking after the flowers in Hyde Park?" asked Lily, with some warmth. "Why, you didn't even water them!"
"I did the organization, the head work of the thing," said Toby. "That's the rub."
"Lily, you are really very vulgar and common in your language sometimes," said Toby. "I have often meant to speak to you about it; it makes me very unhappy."
"Indeed! Try and cheer up. But really, Toby, and quite seriously, I wish you would settle to do something; I don't care what. Go into the Foreign Office."
"Languages," said Toby; "I don't know any."
"Or some other office, or buy a farm, and work it properly, and try to make it pay. Give your mind seriously to something. I hate a loafer. Besides, a profession seems to me the greatest luxury in the world."
"Plain folk like me don't care for luxuries," said Toby. "I'm not like Kit. Kit is perfectly happy without the necessaries of life, provided she has the luxuries."
This diversion was more successful. Lily was silent a moment.