"Would you like to take a lesson in the art of being young?"
"Immensely."
"I know somebody who could give you one."
"Really, Jimmy! What strange people you always know; curates, and women
who have never written improper novels, and all sorts of beings who seem
merely mythical to the rest of us!"
"This is not a curate."
"Then it must be a woman who has never written an improper novel."
"It is."
"And you mean to tell me seriously that there is such a person? To see
her would be to take what _Punch_ calls a pre-historic peep. She must be
ingeniously old."
"She is sixty-four, and she is my aunt."
"How beautiful of her. I am an only child, so I can never be an uncle.
It is one of my lasting regrets, although I daresay that profession is
terribly overcrowded like the others. But why is she sixty-four? It
seems a risky thing for a woman to be?"
"She takes the risk without thinking at all about it."
"She must be very daring."
"No; she's only completely natural."
"Natural. What is that?"
Jimmy laughed again. He was fond of Claude, but he and Claude met so
often chiefly because they were extremes. Jimmy was a handsome athlete,
who had been called to the bar, and persistently played cricket or
football whenever the courts were sitting. He was cursed with a large
private income, which he spent royally, and blessed with a good heart.
Once he had appeared for the defence in a divorce case, which--lasting
longer than he had anticipated, owing to the obvious guilt of all
parties concerned in it, and the consequent difficulty of getting an
innocent jury to agree about a verdict--had cost him a cricket match.
Since then he had looked upon the law in the legendary way, as an ass,
and spent most of his time in exercising his muscles. In the intervals
of leisure which he allowed himself from sports and pastimes, he saw a
good deal of Claude, who amused him, and whom he never bored. He called
him a boudoir boy, but had a real liking for him, nevertheless, and
sometimes longed to wake him up, and separate him from the absurd
_chiffons_ with which he occupied his time. Now he laughed at him
openly, and Claude did not mind in the least. They were really friends,
however preposterous such a friendship might seem.
"What is that? Well--my aunt. When you see her you will understand
thoroughly."
"Does she live in Park Lane or in Clapham?"
"She lives in the country, in Northamptonshire, is very well off, and
has a place of her own."
"And a husband?"
"No. She is a prosperous spinster, dines the local cricket team once a
year, keeps the church going, knows all the poor people, and all the
rich in the neighbourhood, and has only one fad."
"What is that?"
"She always wears her hair powdered. Come down and stay with her, and
she will teach you to be young."
"Well--but I am afraid she will work me very hard."
"Not she. You would like a new experience."
Claude yawned, and blinked his long dark eyes in a carefully Eastern
manner.
"I am afraid there is no such thing left for me," he said with an
elaborate dreariness. "Still, if your aunt will invite me, I will come.
Of course you will accompany me, I must have a chaperon."
"Of course."
"Ah!" Claude said, as a footman came softly into the room, "here is our
absinthe. Now, Jimmy, please do forget your horrible football, and I
will teach you to be decadent."
"As my aunt will teach you to be young--you old boy."