'Yes, that is just what I want to know,' said the Duck, and she swam away to the end of the pond, and stood upon her head, in order to give her children a good example. 'And what, pray, is your idea of the duties of a devoted friend?' asked a Green Linnet, who was sitting in a willow-tree hard by, and had overheard the conversation. Indeed, I know of nothing in the world that is either nobler or rarer than a devoted friendship.' Love is all very well in its way, but friendship is much higher. In fact, I have never been married, and I never intend to be. 'Ah! I know nothing about the feelings of parents,' said the Water-rat 'I am not a family man. 'Nothing of the kind,' answered the Duck, 'every one must make a beginning, and parents cannot be too patient.' 'What disobedient children!' cried the old Water-rat 'they really deserve to be drowned.' They were so young that they did not know what an advantage it is to be in society at all. But the little ducks paid no attention to her. 'You will never be in the best society unless you can stand on your heads,' she kept saying to them and every now and then she showed them how it was done. The little ducks were swimming about in the pond, looking just like a lot of yellow canaries, and their mother, who was pure white with real red legs, was trying to teach them how to stand on their heads in the water. He had bright beady eyes and stiff grey whiskers, and his tail was like a long bit of black india-rubber. One morning the old Water-rat put his head out of his hole. He was a wizened old man, with a face like wrinkled parchment, and a most piteous expression.Note: Oscar Wilde intended this story to be read to children The beggar himself was standing on a raised platform in a corner of the studio. When Hughie came in he found Trevor putting the finishing touches to a wonderful life-size picture of a beggar-man. Men who are dandies and women who are darlings rule the world, at least they should do so.’ However, after he got to know Hughie better, he liked him quite as much for his bright, buoyant spirits and his generous, reckless nature, and had given him the permanent entrée to his studio. ‘The only people a painter should know,’ he used to say, ‘are people who are bête and beautiful, people who are an artistic pleasure to look at and an intellectual repose to talk to. He had been very much attracted by Hughie at first, it must be acknowledged, entirely on account of his personal charm. However, when he took up the brush he was a real master, and his pictures were eagerly sought after. Personally he was a strange rough fellow, with a freckled face and a red ragged beard. But he was also an artist, and artists are rather rare. One morning, as he was on his way to Holland Park, where the Mertons lived, he dropped in to see a great friend of his, Alan Trevor. ‘Come to me, my boy, when you have got ten thousand pounds of your own, and we will see about it,’ he used to say and Hughie looked very glum in those days, and had to go to Laura for consolation. The Colonel was very fond of Hughie, but would not hear of any engagement. They were the handsomest couple in London, and had not a penny-piece between them. Laura adored him, and he was ready to kiss her shoe-strings. The girl he loved was Laura Merton, the daughter of a retired Colonel who had lost his temper and his digestion in India, and had never found either of them again. Ultimately he became nothing, a delightful, ineffectual young man with a perfect profile and no profession. That did not answer the sherry was a little too dry. He had gone on the Stock Exchange for six months but what was a butterfly to do among bulls and bears? He had been a tea-merchant for a little longer, but had soon tired of pekoe and souchong. Hughie hung the first over his looking-glass, put the second on a shelf between Ruff’s Guide and Bailey’s Magazine, and lived on two hundred a year that an old aunt allowed him. His father had bequeathed him his cavalry sword and a History of the Peninsular War in fifteen volumes. He was as popular with men as he was with women and he had every accomplishment except that of making money. But then he was wonderfully good-looking, with his crisp brown hair, his clear-cut profile, and his grey eyes. He never said a brilliant or even an ill-natured thing in his life. Poor Hughie! Intellectually, we must admit, he was not of much importance. These are the great truths of modern life which Hughie Erskine never realised. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. The poor should be practical and prosaic. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow.
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