“Oh, I like it. I think your ideas are amusing.” “Not amusing, merely common-sense. But you mustn’t let me talk all the time. You see, I find most people rather oppress my spirits, and keep me from saying what I really think. So as a rule I’m silent, but when I find a sympathetic victim, well, you’ve already had a bitter experience of how I chatter nineteen to the dozen. There, I’m off again! Now tell me what you were going to say about the Simple-Lifers.” “The Simple-Lifers? Oh, yes, I remember. Well, there was a set of people down there who had fled from the horrors of the mechanical age—you know, the usual art-y sort, Ruskin-cum-William Morris....” “Hand-looms, vegetable diet, long embroidered frocks and home-spun tweed trousers from the Hebrides? I know them. ‘News from Nowhere’ people. What a gospel to lead nowhither!” “Yes. Well, they were to lead the simple life, work with their hands part of the time, and do arts and crafts and write the rest of the time. They were also to show the world an example of perfect community life. They used to make the farm girls dance round a Maypole—the boys wouldn’t come, they stood in the lane and jeered.” “And what happened?” “Well, those who hadn’t private incomes got very hard up, and were always borrowing money off the two or three members who had money. The arts and crafts didn’t sell, and the toiling on the land had very meagre results. Then they got themselves somehow into two or three cliques, always running down the people in the other cliques, talking scandal about them, and saying they were ruining everything by their selfish behaviour. Then the wife of one of the rich members ran away with one of the men, and the other rich members were so scandalized that they went away too, and the whole community broke up. The village was very glad when they went. The farmers and gentry were furious because they talked Socialism and the ideal state to the labourers. And all the labourers’ wives were furious because the Simple-Life women tried to brighten up their lives and make them furnish their cottages ‘artistically....’” They had missed two buses outside the tube station in their excited chatter. A third came along. George grabbed Elizabeth’s arm: “Come on, here’s our bus. Let’s go on top.” The bus-top was empty except for a couple spooning on a back-seat. George and Elizabeth a little haughtily went to the very front. “Other peoples’ love-affairs are very tedious,” said George sententiously. “Oh, very.” “Rather primitive and humiliating.” “Why humiliating?” “Oh, because...” “Fares, please!” The conductor lurched skilfully against the front of the bus as it made a cow-like leap forward. George raked in his pocket for the pennies. “Let me pay my share.” Elizabeth produced a sixpence. “Oh, no, please. Look, let me take you back to Hampstead, and you can pay from Tottenham Court Road.” “All right.”