Read "Mad Barbara" by Warwick Deeping online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
My Lord Gore could not conceal an instinct of fastidious disapproval as he walked homeward with his son along Pall Mall. Sumptuousness came before godliness in his scheme of values, and though poverty and slovenliness were inevitable to the world, my lord found them useful as a respectable background to heighten the effect of an exquisite refinement in dress. But to have a soiled and weather-beaten scamp familiarly at one's elbow offered too crude a contrast, and suggested a sinister interest in Whitefriars.
"What a devil of a mess you are in, Jack, my man! " And there was a slight lifting of my lord's nostrils. "You might have sent one of the men to me instead of making a martyr of yourself."