"
Mr Bingham looked bewildered.
"I really don't know," he said, blinking his eyes, "what you are
talking about. Do you ask us to give this obvious lunatic nearly a
thousand a year for life?"
"Not at all," cried Basil, keenly and triumphantly. "I never said
for life. Not at all."
"What for, then?" asked the meek Bingham, suppressing an instinct
meekly to tear his hair. "How long is this endowment to run? Not
till his death? Till the Judgement day?"
"No," said Basil, beaming, "but just what I said. Till he has
stopped dancing." And he lay back with satisfaction and his hands
in his pockets.
Bingham had by this time fastened his eyes keenly on Basil Grant
and kept them there.
"Come, Mr Grant," he said. "Do I seriously understand you to
suggest that the Government pay Professor Chadd an extraordinarily
high salary simply on the ground that he has (pardon the phrase)
gone mad? That he should be paid more than four good clerks solely
on the ground that he is flinging his boots about in the back
yard?"
"Precisely," said Grant composedly.
"That this absurd payment is not only to run on with the absurd
dancing, but actually to stop with the absurd dancing?"
"One must stop somewhere," said Grant. "Of course."
Bingham rose and took up his perfect stick and gloves.
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