The advantages of being twenty-three years
old, gay and good-looking, without a care in the world, now that he had
Michael's cheque in his pocket, needed no comment, still less complaint.
He, like the crowd who had sufficient to pay for a six-penny seat at a
music-hall, was perfectly content with life in general; to-morrow
would be time enough to do a little more work and glean a little more
pleasure.
It was indeed an admirable England, where it was not necessary even
to desire, for there were so many things, bright, cheerful things to
distract the mind from desire. It was a day of dozing in the sun, like
the submerged, scattered units or duets on the grass of the Green Park,
of behaving like the lilies of the field. . . . Francis found he was
rather late, and proceeded hastily to his mother's house in Savile
Row to array himself, if not "like one of these," like an exceedingly
well-dressed young man, who demanded of his tailor the utmost of his
art; with the prospect, owing to Michael's generosity, of being paid
to-morrow.
Michael, when his cousin had left him, did not at once proceed to his
evening by himself with his piano, though an hour before he had longed
to be alone with it and a pianoforte arrangement of the Meistersingers,
of which he had promised himself a complete perusal that evening.
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