Mrs. Sparsit’s tea was just set for her on a pert little table, with its tripod of legs in an attitude, which she insinuated after office-hours, into the company of the stern, leathern-topped, long board-table that bestrode the middle of the room. The light porter placed the tea-tray on it, knuckling his forehead as a form of homage. ‘Thank you, Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Thank _you_, ma’am,’ returned the light porter. He was a very light porter indeed; as light as in the days when he blinkingly defined a horse, for girl number twenty. ‘All is shut up, Bitzer?’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘All is shut up, ma’am.’ ‘And what,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, pouring out her tea, ‘is the news of the day? Anything?’ ‘Well, ma’am, I can’t say that I have heard anything particular. Our people are a bad lot, ma’am; but that is no news, unfortunately.’ ‘What are the restless wretches doing now?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Merely going on in the old way, ma’am. Uniting, and leaguing, and engaging to stand by one another.’ ‘It is much to be regretted,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, making her nose more Roman and her eyebrows more Coriolanian in the strength of her severity, ‘that the united masters allow of any such class-combinations.’ ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Bitzer. ‘Being united themselves, they ought one and all to set their faces against employing any man who is united with any other man,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘They have done that, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer; ‘but it rather fell through, ma’am.’ ‘I do not pretend to understand these things,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with dignity, ‘my lot having been signally cast in a widely different sphere; and Mr. Sparsit, as a Powler, being also quite out of the pale of any such dissensions. I only know that these people must be conquered, and that it’s high time it was done, once for all.’ ‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, with a demonstration of great respect for Mrs. Sparsit’s oracular authority. ‘You couldn’t put it clearer, I am sure, ma’am.’ As this was his usual hour for having a little confidential chat with Mrs. Sparsit, and as he had already caught her eye and seen that she was going to ask him something, he made a pretence of arranging the rulers, inkstands, and so forth, while that lady went on with her tea, glancing through the open window, down into the street. ‘Has it been a busy day, Bitzer?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Not a very busy day, my lady. About an average day.’ He now and then slided into my lady, instead of ma’am, as an involuntary acknowledgment of Mrs. Sparsit’s personal dignity and claims to reverence. ‘The clerks,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, carefully brushing an imperceptible crumb of bread and butter from her left-hand mitten, ‘are trustworthy, punctual, and industrious, of course?’ ‘Yes, ma’am, pretty fair, ma’am. With the usual exception.’