Tony let himself, in his place, be served. "Doesn't every one in the wide world call me the inevitable 'Tony'? The name's dreadful—for a banker; it should have been a bar for me to that career. It's fatal to dignity. But then of course I haven't any dignity."
"I think you haven't much," Rose replied. "But I've never seen any one get on so well without it; and, after all, you've just enough to make Miss Martle recognise it."
Tony wondered. "By calling me 'Mr. Bream'? Oh, for her I'm a greybeard—and I address her as I addressed her as a child. Of course I admit," he added with an intention vaguely pacific, "that she has entirely ceased to be that."
"She's wonderful," said Rose, handing him something buttered and perversely cold. He assented even to the point of submissively helping himself. "She's a charming creature."
"I mean she's wonderful about your little girl."
"Devoted, isn't she? That dates from long ago. She has a special sentiment about her."
Rose was silent a moment. "It's a little life to preserve and protect," she then said. "Of course!"
