"The astounding part of it is," he burst out, "that this sort of thing, this Movement and all the rest of it, does really give the quality of English public affairs. It's like a sample--dredged. The--the _cheapness_ of it! Raised voices, rash assertions, sham investigations, meetings and committees and meetings, that's the stuff of it, and politicians really have to attend to it, and silly, ineffective, irritating bills really get drafted and messed about with and passed on the strength of it. Public affairs are still in the Dark Ages. Nobody now would think of getting together a scratch committee of rich old women and miscellaneous conspicuous people to design an electric tram, and jabbering and jabbering and jabbering, and if any one objects"--a note of personal bitterness came into his voice--"jabbering faster; but nobody thinks it ridiculous to attempt the organization of poor people's affairs in that sort of way. This project of the supersession of Wages by Payment in Kind--oh! it's childish. If it wasn't it would be outrageous and indecent. Your uncle and aunt haven't thought for a moment of any single one of the necessary consequences of these things they say their confounded Movement aims at, effects upon the race, upon public spirit, upon people's habits and motives. They've just a queer craving to feel powerful and influential, which they think they can best satisfy by upsetting the lives of no end of harmless poor people--the only people they dare upset--and that's about as far as they go.... Your aunt's detestable, Marjorie." Marjorie had never seen him so deeply affected by anything but herself. It seemed to her he was needlessly disturbed by a trivial matter. He sulked for a space, and then broke out again. "That confounded woman talks of my physical science," he said, "as if research were an amiable weakness, like collecting postage stamps. And it's changed human conditions more in the last ten years than all the parliamentary wire-pullers and legislators and administrative experts have done in two centuries. And for all that, there's more clerks in Whitehall than professors of physics in the whole of England."... "I suppose it's the way that sort of thing gets done," said Marjorie, after an interval. "That sort of thing doesn't get done," snapped Trafford. "All these people burble about with their movements and jobs, and lectures and stuff--and _things happen_. Like some one getting squashed to death in a crowd. Nobody did it, but anybody in the muddle can claim to have done it--if only they've got the cheek of your Aunt Plessington." He seemed to have finished. "_Done!_" he suddenly broke out again. "Why! people like your Aunt Plessington don't even know where the handle is. If they ventured to look for it, they'd give the whole show away! Done, indeed!" "Here we are!" said Marjorie, a little relieved to find the hansom turning out of King's Road into their own side street....