Nobody but Mr. Tipham had ever beard of Creusot; so the remark was not taken up, and the party moved into the dining-room in depressed silence. At dinner it soon became apparent that Mr. Tipham was out to give instruction on other matters than art. The conversation had drifted, as conversation often did at Chiltern, on to the subject of boys. Mr. Grady had complained of their carelessness in handling chemicals, which resulted in frequent explosions, and their incapacity for anything like patient or systematic research; and Mr. Chase had pointed out the superiority of the Classics in this respect, in that they compelled a boy to think and left no room for experiment. “You’re both right and both wrong,” said Mr. Tipham with easy assurance. “Chemistry can be made very interesting and the Classics very dull, and _vice versâ_. The truth is that, if you want to keep boys interested, you must make things lively. _I_ always chip in for part of the time with something quite off the lesson. To-day I gave them a little lecture on Green Chartreuse.” Mr. Plummer, who had long been struggling with a desire to snub tempered by a sense of his duties as a host, now cleared his throat and said, not without an effort: “I suppose you had a good deal of experience before you came here?” “No,” replied Mr. Tipham tartly; “but I happen to have been a boy myself.” And again the temperature fell by several degrees. Mr. Bent had so far held himself in reserve, profoundly annoyed yet watching with a certain cynical enjoyment the growing irritation of his colleagues and their inability to clothe it in appropriate words. But when, shortly afterwards, Mr. Tipham laid it down as an axiom that “Dorian Grey” was the greatest work of art that the human intellect has ever produced, he saw his opportunity and began in his best ironic vein. “Its refreshing to hear you say that; so few people ever venture, nowadays, to express old-fashioned opinions; and the Victorians seldom get justice done to them by the rising generation. I don’t know that I agree with you on this particular point, but I am delighted to claim you as a Victorian.” If there was one thing which Mr. Tipham disliked more than another it was to be identified in any way with the Victorians; so he raised his eyebrows and said coldly, “How so?” If Mr. Bent had been wise he would have left well alone; as it was, he went on to embroider the theme a little recklessly. “If one wants to be in the swim nowadays,” he said, “one has to go into ecstasies over de Barsac or Roger Filkison. You read Roger Filkison, of course?” Mr. Tipham admitted, with some reluctance, that he did not. “Oh, he’s the man, you know,” continued Mr. Bent, “who writes the testimonials for the liver and kidney pills--the neo-realism they call it; very clever and morbid. I don’t like it myself, but I know several Cambridge men who think it the most poignant literature since Verlaine.”