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boy.
    “What else is there to do? I wonder you dare stand there and ask such a thing. What do other people with no money do? Hasn’t such a thing ever entered your head? You’ve got to work, my lad. W-o-r-k! That’s what there is to do.”
    “Work?” Johnnie turned the word over doubtfully in the air, as if distrusting its implications. “I’d work all right, darling, if there was anything to work at. But what could I do?”
    “Oh, good heavens, what does that matter? You can find something, surely. Don’t tell me you’re no use to anybody. Though I must say you haven’t shown signs of being much use at anything so far, except borrowing.”
    “All right, all right,” Johnnie said sulkily. “I’ve said I’ll work, if there’s anything to work at. There’s no need for you to speak like that.”
    “There’s every need, I should think,” Lina retorted, her nervous exasperation growing. “In fact, it’s quite time somebody did speak to you like that. I suppose you know what everyone says about you? That you’re a waster.”
    “And you agreed with them, I suppose?” Johnnie sneered.
    “I didn’t believe them; and I married you to prove it. But what do you expect me to believe now? A man who can borrow a thousand pounds, with no prospect of repaying it, and then expect his wife’s father to keep him for the rest of his life ...” Lina was scarcely less astonished than Johnnie to hear the words issuing from her mouth. They seemed to come out of their own accord, and all she could do was to sit and listen to them.
    Johnnie’s sulky lines deepened. “Go on. You’ll be telling me next I married you for your money.”
    “If I did, I should only be saying what plenty of people have said to me,” said Lina, and burst into tears.
    It was their first quarrel, and it was a bad one.
2
    An hour later it had subsided into a more or less acrimonious discussion.
    What was Johnnie to do?
    Johnnie, it seemed, had no views on that point, beyond a scarcely hidden reluctance to do anything at all. However, he intimated handsomely enough that if Lina could find anything suitable for him to do, he would very probably, in view of her strange ideas, go so far as to do it. Unfortunately he at once vetoed every suggestion she made, as unsuitable.
    Lina wept, now with rage and now with frustration, and Johnnie stood sulkily by.
    The maid brought in the tray of whisky and soda, and two generous portions were poured out, for the soothing of frayed nerves.
    The discussion continued, on rather more mellow lines. Lina wept again and this time was comforted. More whisky was poured out, and still the discussion went on.
    What was Johnnie to do?
    With characteristic ineptitude on the part of the Aysgarth parents, none of the Aysgarth boys had been trained to any profession or useful occupation whatever. Each of them had been brought up to expect as much money as he would want, and extravagance had been rather encouraged as a gentleman’s prerogative than condemned as the act nowadays of a fool. The only subject Johnnie knew really intimately was horses, their training, their ailments, and their breeding; but to Lina’s suggestion that he should breed them he pointed out that considerable capital was necessary; the same objection applied still more forcibly to the opening of a stable, and Lina herself vetoed the idea of a little gentlemanly horse-dealing as an insufficient and too spasmodic occupation. But why should not Johnnie become a vet? Why, because years of training were necessary, and one has to know about all sorts of animals besides horses; moreover, Johnnie did not wish to become a vet.
    So what was Johnnie to do?
    Gradually Lina found herself talking more and more peremptorily. Johnnie had got over his sulkiness and was now charmingly penitent, but Lina remained hard and practical, waving him away whenever he tried to embrace her, or else suffering his kisses in abstracted silence, her mind busy with the theme of the