I told her so. I tossed away the barely begun cigarette she had given me, not choosing to go on smoking a cigarette of hers, and told her so with as much Prussian thoroughness as is consistent with being at the same time a perfect gentleman. No woman (except of course my wife) shall ever be able to say I have not behaved to her as a gentleman should; and my hearers will be more than ever convinced of the inexplicable toughness of Mrs. Menzies-Legh’s nature, of the surprising impossibility of producing the least effect upon her, when I tell them that at the end of quite a long speech on my part, not, I believe ineloquent, and yet as plainspoken as the speech of a man can be within the framework which should always surround him, the carved and gilt and--it must be added--expensive framework of gentlemanliness, she merely looked at me again and said: “Dear Baron, why is it that men, when they have walked a little farther than they want to, or have gone hungry a little longer than they like to, are always so dreadfully cross?” The lumbering into the field of the Ilsa with the rest of the party made an immediate reply impossible. “Hullo,” said Jellaby, on seeing us apparently at rest in the grass. “Enjoying yourselves?” I fancy this must be a socialistic formula, for short as the period of my acquaintance with him had been he had already used it to me three times. Perhaps it is the way in which his sect reminds those outside it of the existence of its barren and joyless notions of other people’s obligations. A Socialist, as far as I can make out, is a person who may never sit down. If he does, the bleak object he calls the Community immediately becomes vocal, because it considers that by sitting down he is cheating it of what he would be producing by his labour if he did not. Once I (quite good naturedly) observed to Jellaby that in a socialistic world the chair-making industry would be the first to go to the wall (or the dogs--I cannot quite recollect which I said it would go to) for want of suitable sitters, and he angrily retorted--but this occurred later in the tour, and no doubt I shall refer to it in its proper place. Mrs. Menzies-Legh got up at once on his asking if we were enjoying ourselves, as though her conscience reproached her, and went over to the larder of her caravan and busily began pulling out pots; and I too seeing that it was expected of me prepared to rise (for English society is conducted on such artificial lines that immediately a woman begins to do anything a man must at least pretend to do something too) but found that my short stay on the grass had stiffened my over-tired limbs to such an extent that I could not. The two nondescripts, who were passing, lingered to look. “Can I help you?” said the one they called Jumps, as I made a second ineffectual effort, advancing and holding out a knuckly hand. “Will you take my arm?” said the other one, Jane, crooking a bony elbow.