And there were only three comfortable chairs, low and easy, in which a man might stretch himself and smoke, and these, without so much as a preliminary offering of them to anybody else, were sat in by the ladies. It did seem a turning of good old customs upside down when I saw Edelgard get into one as a matter of course, so indifferent to what I might be thinking that she did not even look my way. How vividly on such occasions did I remember my easy chair at Storchwerder and how sacred it was, and how she never dared, if I were in the house, approach it, nor I firmly believe ever dared, so good was her training and so great her respect, approach it when I was out. Well, our proverb--descriptive of a German gentleman about to start on his (no doubt) well-deserved holiday travels--“He who loves his wife leaves her at home,” is as wise now as the day it was written, and about this time I began to see that by having made my bed in a manner that disregarded it I was going to have to lie on it. The Menzies-Leghs returned wreathed in smiles--I beg you to note the reason, and all of wretchedness that it implies--because the owner of the field’s wife had not been rude, and had together with the desired permission sold them two pounds of sausages, the cold potatoes left from her dinner, a jug of milk, a piece of butter, and some firewood. Also they had met a baker’s cart and had bought loaves. This, of course, as far as it went, was satisfactory, especially the potatoes that neither wanted peeling nor patience while they grew soft, but I submit that it was only a further proof of our extreme lowness in the scale of well-cared-for humanity. Here in my own home, with these events in what Menzies-Legh and Jellaby would have called the blue distance, how strange it seems that just sausages and cold potatoes should ever have been able to move me to exultation. We at once got into the field, hugging the hedge, and in the shelter of the Ilsa (which entered last) made our fire. I was deputed (owing to the unfortunate circumstance of my being the only person who had brought one) to hold my umbrella over the frying pan while Jellaby fried the sausages on one of the stoves. It was not what I would have chosen, for while protecting the sausages I was also, in spite of every effort to the contrary, protecting Jellaby; and what an anomalous position for a gentleman of birth and breeding and filled with the aristocratic opinions, and perhaps (for I am a fair man) prejudices, incident to being born and bred--well born of course I mean, not recognizing any other form of birth--what a position, to stand there keeping the back of a British Socialist dry!