This reply pleased Mr. Perry, and he proposed that we should go to his house at once. "I shall take a tram," he said; "but I dare say you and Edward would prefer to walk." At this point Lord Potter came out of the police court. Two young men in smart clothes, with silk hats and patent leather boots, were standing on the steps smoking cigarettes, and did not notice him. He stopped at the top of the steps, and said in a tone of contempt: "Will you kindly get out of my way?" The two young men looked round hurriedly and slunk aside, taking off their hats as Lord Potter walked down the steps, ostentatiously holding his rags together to avoid contact with them. "It is that spirit," said Mr. Perry, who had observed the scene, "that is responsible for so much of the class-hatred that is now rife. You can hardly wonder at the rich hating the poor, when they are treated in that way." Lord Potter passed on with his nose in the air, but when he had gone another two or three steps, turned round and said to Mr. Perry: "You have had a lucky escape, sir. Your method of life is bringing you down pretty low, and if you are wise you will give up all this nonsense, and return to the quite respectable class in which you were born." Then he turned to me. "As for you, young man," he said, "I shall make it my business to know more about you. I don't believe you are what you pretend to be." As he walked away with his dirty head in the air, Mr. Perry spluttered indignantly: "The _respectable_ class in which I was born! He knows very well that I am of a good family--as good as his own. Really, the arrogance of the dirty set is getting past all bearing!" "He makes you feel as if your clothes fitted you," said young Perry. "But never mind him, father. He can't touch us." FOOTNOTES: [1] A Daylight Saving Bill had been passed some years before, by which an hour was borrowed in April to be paid back in October. The necessity, however, of getting up an hour earlier than usual had made the whole populace so cross that the Government which had passed the Bill was forced to resign, and the next Government repealed the law immediately upon coming into office. They omitted, however, to allow for the repayment of the borrowed hour, and as no Government had since cared to touch the question, Upsidonian time had remained an hour earlier ever since. [2] It was held in Upsidonia that private knowledge of any fact was the possessor's own property, and, as no one was willing to acquire property if they could help it, questions of this sort were never pressed. It had even been laid down in the courts that a person too ready with information could be indicted for forcing property on his hearers. Vide Cope on "The Bore in Law." [3] I might also have been arrested for sleeping out with visible means of substance, which had been in Mr. Perry's mind when he had imperilled himself by his kindly action, as he told me afterwards. CHAPTER VI