“He is an officer,” objects Bertram, with regret and condemnation in his tone. “With his true and profound altruism he should have gone before the mast.” “I suppose our sex will have to sweep and cook and sew before we are allowed to frolic?” asks Lady Jane. “You’ll have to produce a certificate that you have made and baked three dozen pigeon pies before you’ll be allowed one waltz, Lady Jane,” says Marlow, who has with difficulty kept his mouth shut. “We shall sweep our own chimneys, clean ourselves, and play the violin,” replies that lively person. “We shall have to cook our salmon before we’re allowed to fish for it; we shall have to roast our pheasants before we’re allowed to shoot them, and----” Bertram interrupts her with scant courtesy: “I understood that those who did me the honour to come here to-day brought open minds and philosophical views to this meeting, or I should not have invited you to discuss and consider the best means for the educated classes to anticipate the coming changes of the world.” “Why should we anticipate them,” murmurs the old duke, “when they’ll be so deucedly uncomfortable to all of us?” “Yes, indeed,” says Southwold, “it’ll be bad enough to grin and bear’em.” Bertram plays wearily with his shut note-book. “If you cannot see the theoretic beauty of united and universal work, it is hopeless to expect that you should desire its practical adjustment to everyday life.” “Well, but,” says the politician, who is nothing if not practical, “it is just the utter unworkableness of your system which damns it in the eyes of rational men. Pardon my saying so.” Lady Southwold murmurs: “Give them some tea, Wilfrid; they are all growing cross.” “As you please. But it is to me absolutely frightful to see how unconscious of your own doom, and how indifferent to the great movements of the day you all are----” “If they are really great movements, they’ll move without us; you can’t stop an iceberg or an earthquake with your little finger. But there’s a good deal of grit in the old order of things still,” says the duke. “Yes, I’ll have a cup of tea, Wilfrid; I see you’ve got it there.” Bertram murmurs wearily: “Critchett--tea!” “Yes, sir,” says a person who is the perfection of all the virtues of valetdom. Marlow, wholly undisturbed by the insults which have been heaped on him, calls out: “And temperance drinks, Critchett! Lemons divorced from rum, sterilised milk, barley-water, tartaric acid----” “Mr. Bertram,” says Cicely Seymour, “how do you reconcile your conscience to the debasing offices which you employ Critchett to fill for you?” “Or to the fact of keeping a Critchett at all?” adds his aunt Southwold. “Surely it’s Critchett who keeps him, ----, out of a strait-waistcoat?” murmurs Marlow. Critchett hands tea and coffee and chocolate, in a silver service, with cakes, fruits, and biscuits.