Launched now upon a business venture that would require my unremitting attention if it were to prosper, it may be imagined that I had little leisure for the social vagaries of the Honourable George, shocking as these might be to one’s finer tastes. And yet on the following morning I found time to tell him what. To put it quite bluntly, I gave him beans for his loose behaviour the previous evening, in publicly ogling and meeting as an equal one whom one didn’t know. To my amazement, instead of being heartily ashamed of his licentiousness, I found him recalcitrant. Stubborn as a mule he was and with a low animal cunning that I had never given him credit for. “Demosthenes was the son of a cutler,” said he, “and Napoleon worked on a canal-boat, what? Didn’t you say so yourself, you juggins, what? Fancy there being upper and lower classes among natives! What rot! And I like North America. I don’t mind telling you straight I’m going to take it up.” Horrified by these reckless words, I could only say “Noblesse oblige,” meaning to convey that whatever the North Americans did, the next Earl of Brinstead must not meet persons one doesn’t know, whereat he rejoined tartly that I was “to stow that piffle!” Being now quite alarmed, I took the further time to call upon Belknap-Jackson, believing that he, if any one, could recall the Honourable George to his better nature. He, too, was shocked, as I had been, and at first would have put the blame entirely upon the shoulders of Cousin Egbert, but at this I was obliged to admit that the Honourable George had too often shown a regrettable fondness for the society of persons that did not matter, especially females, and I cited the case of the typing-girl and the Brixton millinery person, with either of whom he would have allied himself in marriage had not his lordship intervened. Belknap-Jackson was quite properly horrified at these revelations. “Has he no sense of ‘Noblesse oblige’?” he demanded, at which I quoted the result of my own use of this phrase to the unfortunate man. Quite too plain it was that “Noblesse oblige!” would never stop him from yielding to his baser impulses. “We must be tactful, then,” remarked Belknap-Jackson. “Without appearing to oppose him we must yet show him who is really who in Red Gap. We shall let him see that we have standards which must be as rigidly adhered to as those of an older civilization. I fancy it can be done.” Privately I fancied not, yet I forbore to say this or to prolong the painful interview, particularly as I was due at the United States Grill.