As the men entered she moved again to Lady Wereminster’s side, and Meavy, in obedience to her signal, crossed to Mrs. Farquharson. "Well, what do you think of my boy’s progress?" said Calvert. He seated himself between the two women, and Creagh and Beadon joined the group. "That last speech of his added a very important seat to your long list of victories. I’m a Liberal myself, as you know, but I can’t say I was sorry we were beaten on that occasion." Creagh laughed. "For once I was right, eh, Beadon? Do you remember one afternoon when we were talking about the man and the hour?" "You have the man, but the hour has not yet struck," said Hare gravely. "After triumph, reaction." "You mean that in our national cocksureness lies our peril?" said Beadon. "We say we expect a fight, and then go to sleep on feather-beds in comfortable security." "I often think we are like careless housemaids," said Lady Wereminster, "who let the dust accumulate in corners, and bitterly resent the necessity of cleaning them out." "The truth is," said Hare, "we’re getting too luxurious. Even for sport, men don’t deny themselves now as they did at the beginning of the century. Love of luxury has spread even to the lower classes. A district messenger boy thinks himself very ill-used if he hasn’t got his own bicycle, and our grooms’ sons learn the piano. We make extravagance our god, not duty. Palatial hotels and motor-cars between them have killed home life in England. People won’t realize it’s a much greater compliment to be asked by their friends to dine in private houses instead of restaurants." "I know that modern girls spend more on their dress in a month than I did in a year," said Lady Wereminster. "I remember a young niece telling me that it was impossible to go through a London season with less than twenty-five new evening frocks. I used to wear book-muslins, and looked a great deal nicer in them then, Wereminster says, than my own great-grandchildren do now in hand-painted chiffon." "It’s the tendency of the age," said Hare; "our class sins worse than any other in that respect. Luxury is a blight which has fallen upon the world; within the last ten years it has grown to be part and parcel of our existence. In the old days politicians and diplomatists took their duties seriously, and never grumbled at hard work. If a man does eight hours’ work now he thinks himself ill-used, and goes to the country to recuperate. Duty is irksome—it always was—but fifty years ago men faced it as a force to be reckoned with, not to evade. Our blood was blood then, and ran red. Moral anæmia had not paled it."