“By the way,” he said presently, “did you meet a lad Hennerley? He’s come out recently, I believe.”
“Oh yes, he’s in the police. A rotten bounder.”
“I should hardly have expected him to be that. His uncle is my friend Lord Barraclough. I had a letter from Lady Barraclough only the other day asking me to look out for him.”
“I heard he was related to somebody or other. I suppose that’s how he got the job. He’s been to Eton and Oxford and he doesn’t forget to let you know it.”
“You surprise me,” said Mr. Warburton. “All his family have been at Eton and Oxford for a couple of hundred years. I should have expected him to take it as a matter of course.”
“I thought him a damned prig.”
“To what school did you go?”
“I was born in Barbadoes. I was educated there.”
“Oh I see.”
Mr. Warburton managed to put so much offensiveness into his brief reply that Cooper flushed.
W. Somerset Maugham, “The Outstation”, 1926
Photo: R. Kennedy Stephen
