“And all these pretty things, Mr. Bertram?” asks Lady Jane. “Surely they are the flesh-pots of Egypt, and ought not to be here?” “They ought not,” replies Bertram, “nor Critchett either.” “Oh, he is such a delightful servant; so noiseless, so _prévenant_, and so devoted to you; you would never find his equal if you sent him away.” “No; but for one man to serve another is contrary to all principles of self-respect on either side.” “My dear Wilfrid,” cries Lady Southwold, “how I wish you were small enough to be whipped! What a deal of good it would do you!” Bertram smiles faintly. “Flagellation was, I believe, most admirable discipline; but we have grown too effete for it. Our bodies are as tender as our hearts are hard.” “I have always thought,” said Cicely Seymour, in a very soft voice, “that if everybody could be born with ten thousand a year, nobody would ever do anything wrong.” Bertram looks at her approvingly. “You are on the right road, Miss Seymour. But as we cannot generalise property, we must generalise poverty. The result will be equally good.” “Good Lord!” roars his uncle very loudly. “I never heard such a subversive and immoral doctrine in all my days!” Bertram glances pityingly at him. “And yet it is based on precisely the same theory as the one which you accepted when you passed the Compulsory Clause of the Parish Councils Bill.” “The Upper House passed that infamous Bill. I was in the minority against it,” replies Southwold, very angrily. “But when everybody’s got sixpence a day,” suggests a young man with an ingenuous countenance, “and nobody sixpence halfpenny, surely somebody’ll have a try for the illegal halfpenny, won’t they? It is human nature.” “Certainly not,” replies Bertram, very positively. “Nobody will even wish for an extra halfpenny, because when inequality shall be at an end envy and discontent will be unknown. Besides, if all the property of the world was confiscated or realised and equally distributed, the individual portion would come more nearly to half a crown a head per diem. On half a crown a head per diem any one can live----” Lord Southwold sighs. “Oysters are three shillings a dozen,” he murmurs. “Of course, if you expect to continue the indulgence of an epicure’s diseased appetites----” says Bertram, with impatience. “It’s the oysters that are diseased, not our appetites,” says Southwold, with a second sigh. “If,” says Bertram, ignoring his uncle’s nonsense--“if I have made anything clear in my recent remarks it must surely be that Property is, in the old copy-book phrase, the root of all evil; the mandrake growing out of the bodies of the dead, the poisonous gas exhaling from the carrion of prejudice, of injustice, and of caste.” “But, my dear Wilfrid,” cries Lady Southwold, with equal impatience, “yours is rank Communism.”