CULVER. No you oughn't. There's no time. I simply wanted a bit of information. I've got it. Now I have a bit of information for you. I've been offered a place in this beautiful Honours List. Baronetcy! Me! I am put on the same high plane as Mr. James Brill, the unspeakable. The formal offer hasn't actually arrived--it's late; I expect the letter'll be here in the morning--but I know for a fact I'm in the List for a baronetcy. TRANTO. Well, I congratulate you. CULVER. You'd better not. TRANTO. You deserve more than a baronetcy. Your department has been a striking success--one of the very few in the whole length of Whitehall. CULVER. I know my department has been a success. But that's not why I'm offered a baronetcy. Good heavens, I haven't even spoken to any member of the War Cabinet yet. I've been trying to for about a year, but in spite of powerful influences to help me I've never been able to bring off a meeting with the mandarins. No! I'm offered a baronetcy because I'm respectable; I'm decent; and at the last moment they thought the List looked a bit too thick--so they pushed me in. One of their brilliant afterthoughts!... No damned merit about the thing, I can tell you! TRANTO. Do you mean you intend to refuse? CULVER. Do you mean you ever imagined that I should accept? Me, in the same galley with Brill--who daren't go into his own clubs--and Ullivant, and a few more pretty nearly as bad! Of course, I shall refuse. Nothing on earth would induce me to accept. Nothing! (_More calmly_.) Mind you, I don't blame the Government; probably the Government can't help itself. Therefore the Government must be helped; and sometimes the best way to help a fellow creature is to bring him to his senses by catching him one across the jaw. TRANTO. Why are you making a secret of it? The offer is surely bound to come out. CULVER. Of course. I'm only making a secret of it for the moment, while I prepare the domestic ground for my refusal. TRANTO. You wish me to understand-- CULVER. You know what women are. (_With caution_.) I speak of the sex in general. TRANTO. I see. CULVER. That's all right. TRANTO. Well, if I mayn't congratulate you on the title, let me congratulate you on your marvellous skill in this delicate operation of preparing the domestic ground for your refusal of the title. Your success is complete, absolute. CULVER (_sardonic_.) Complete? Absolute? TRANTO. You have--er--jockeyed Mrs.--er--the sex into committing itself quite definitely against titles. Hence I look on your position as impregnable. CULVER. Good heavens, Tranto! How old are you? TRANTO. Twenty-five.