Could she be blamed
for wanting him to make money? No. Yet whenever she made suggestions
as to how the thing was to be done, he snubbed her by saying
_noblesse oblige_. Naturally a refined and sensitive young girl
objected to having things like _noblesse oblige_ said to her. Where
was the sense in saying _noblesse oblige_? Such a confoundedly silly
thing to say. Only a perfect ass would spend his time rushing about
the place saying _noblesse oblige_ to people.
'By Jove!' Lord Dawlish stopped in his stride. He disentangled
himself from a pedestrian who had rammed him on the back. 'I'll do
it!'
He hailed a passing taxi and directed the driver to make for the
Pen and Ink Club.
The decision at which Bill had arrived with such dramatic
suddenness in the middle of Piccadilly was the same at which some
centuries earlier Columbus had arrived in the privacy of his home.
'Hang it!' said Bill to himself in the cab, 'I'll go to America!'
The exact words probably which Columbus had used, talking the
thing over with his wife.
Bill's knowledge of the great republic across the sea was at this
period of his life a little sketchy. He knew that there had been
unpleasantness between England and the United States in
seventeen-something and again in eighteen-something, but that
things had eventually been straightened out by Miss Edna May
and her fellow missionaries of the Belle of New York Company,
since which time there had been no more trouble.
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