“Ah, no! You’d find me doting on a cabbage, or in dalliance with a brussels sprout.” “You approve of our surroundings, I take it?” observed Lord Sombrewater. “We are in the garden of an emperor.” “Shall we stay here? What are the views of the Sages? It is pleasant, certainly, beyond anything I have ever seen; but one or two circumstances are a little mysterious.” “It passes my comprehension,” said Sprot, “how anyone owning all this wealth can leave it absolutely unguarded. We may be murdered in our beds any night for the sake of the wealth that’s about us. These servants—can you trust them? They’re not white men, you know. I kicked one just now, to show who’s master here. I’ve always heard you ought to kick native servants. But, as I was saying, all this wealth and not a keeper, or a policeman, or even a ‘Trespassers-will-be-Prosecuted’ board.” “It may be the custom of some Europeans to kick native servants,” said Lord Sombrewater testily, “but I shall be obliged if, in this case, you will use the extreme politeness they use with us.” “Oh, certainly, certainly. But, if you will excuse me, all this gold and tortoiseshell, and the bric-à-brac—I suppose that’s valuable, too—who does it belong to? It must belong to somebody, I suppose. Or do you think we might—er—appropriate ... as a souvenir, I mean?” “I don’t suppose they’d object to your pinching it,” said Fulke. “It’s clear there’s no capitalist system here.” “Then you will be happy here?” asked Lychnis. That brought him up short. “Yes, by the split kidneys of St. Sebastian!—thoroughly, frightfully happy!” He added to Ambrose in an undertone: “There’s always the Lake.” “As for me,” put in Blackwood, “my summer-house down by the Lake is of marble and has a copper dome. So beautiful are my surroundings that I would readily stay here for ever, because of the exquisite and continuous temptation to the senses. But can these servants not be made to understand that I always have two lumps of sugar in my tea?” “Sugar?” exclaimed Sprot. “What’s that got to do with meditation?” “It’s a stimulant to the intestinal acrobatics,” said Quentin. “He rewards his performing vestiges with two lumps of sugar.” “And you, Richard?” inquired the chairman. “It seems to me we are committed. True, it is a nuisance to be without any facilities—no instruments, no materials, no laboratory—none to speak of, that is. Yet the place is very pleasant. Not that I am particularly susceptible to natural beauty——” “It’s not natural,” broke in Terence unexpectedly. It was noticed for the first time that he seemed dissatisfied.