"Bravo, Lancelot! You're in lovely form to-night. You seem to go a hundred miles out of your way to come the truly British. First it was oil--now it's jam. There was that aristocratic flash in your eye, too, that look of supreme disdain which brings on riots in Trafalgar Square. Behind the patriotic, the national note: 'How can a people be civilised that eats jam with its meat?' I heard the deeper, the oligarchic accent: 'How can a people be enfranchised that eats meat with its fingers?' Ah, you are right! How you do hate the poor! What bores they are! You aristocrats--the products of centuries of culture, comfort, and cocksureness--will never rid yourselves of your conviction that you are the backbone of England--no, not though that backbone were picked clean of every scrap of flesh by the rats of Radicalism." "What in the devil are you talking about now?" demanded Lancelot. "You seem to me to go a hundred miles out of _your_ way to twit me with my poverty and my breeding. One would almost think you were anxious to convince me of the poverty of _your_ breeding." "Oh, a thousand pardons!" ejaculated Peter, blushing violently. "But, good heavens, old chap! There's your hot temper again. You surely wouldn't suspect _me_, of all people in the world, of meaning anything personal? I'm talking of you as a class. Contempt is in your blood--and quite right! We're such snobs, we deserve it. Why d'ye think I ever took to you as a boy at school? Was it because you scribbled inaccurate sonatas and I had myself a talent for knocking tunes off the piano? Not a bit of it. I thought it was, perhaps, but that was only one of my many youthful errors. No, I liked you because your father was an old English baronet, and mine was a merchant who trafficked mainly in things Teutonic. And that's why I like you still. 'Pon my soul it is. You gratify my historic sense--like an old building. You are picturesque. You stand to me for all the good old ideals, including the pride which we are beginning to see is deuced unchristian. Mind you, it's a curious kind of pride when one looks into it. Apparently it's based on the fact that your family has lived on the nation for generations. And yet you won't take my cheque, which is your own. Now don't swear--I know one mustn't analyse things, or the world would come to pieces, so I always vote Tory." "Then I shall have to turn Radical," grumbled Lancelot. "Certainly you will, when you have had a little more experience of poverty," retorted Peter. "There, there, old man! forgive me. I only do it to annoy you. Fact is, your outbursts of temper attract me. They are pleasant to look back upon when the storm is over. Yes, my dear Lancelot, you are like the king you look--you can do no wrong. You are picturesque. Pass the whisky."