“There!” says Miss Carruthers, putting down her carving tools with a clatter. Loudly, energetically, she addresses herself to her duties as a hostess. “I went to Buszard’s this afternoon,” she proclaims, not without pride. We old county families have always bought our chocolate at the best shops. “But it isn’t what it used to be.” She shakes her head; the high old feudal times are past. “It isn’t the same. Not since the A B C took it over.” “Do you see,” asks Mr. Brimstone, becoming once more his serious self, “that the new Lyons Corner House in Piccadilly Circus will be able to serve fourteen million meals a year?” Mr. Brimstone is always a mine of interesting statistics. “No, really?” Mrs. Cloudesley is astonished. But old Mr. Fox, who happens to have read the same evening paper as Mr. Brimstone, takes almost the whole credit of Mr. Brimstone’s erudition to himself by adding, before the other has time to say it: “Yes, and that’s just twice as many meals as any American restaurant can serve.” “Good old England!” cried Miss Carruthers patriotically. “These Yanks haven’t got us beaten in everything yet.” “So naice, I always think, these Corner Houses,” says Mrs. Cloudesley. “And the music they play is really quite classical, you know, sometimes.” “Quite,” says Mr. Chelifer, savouring voluptuously the pleasure of dropping steeply from the edge of the convivial board into interstellar space. “And so sumptuously decorated,” Mrs. Cloudesley continues. But Mr. Brimstone knowingly lets her know that the marble on the walls is less than a quarter of an inch thick.