"You're ripping, Mike."
"Well, the nuisance of it is that the things I am ripping about appear
to father to be a sort of indoor game. It's all right to play the piano,
if it's too wet to play golf. You can amuse yourself with painting if
there aren't any pheasants to shoot. In fact, he will think that my
wanting to become a musician is much the same thing as if I wanted to
become a billiard-marker. And if he and I talked about it till we were a
hundred years old, he could never possibly appreciate my point of view."
Michael got up and began walking up and down the room with his slow,
ponderous movement.
"Francis, it's a thousand pities that you and I can't change places," he
said. "You are exactly the son father would like to have, and I should
so much prefer being his nephew. However, you come next; that's one
comfort."
He paused a moment.
"You see, the fact is that he doesn't like me," he said. "He has no
sympathy whatever with my tastes, nor with what I am. I'm an awful trial
to him, and I don't see how to help it. It's pure waste of time, my
going on in the Guards. I do it badly, and I hate it. Now, you're made
for it; you're that sort, and that sort is my father's sort.
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