"Indeed, I meant nothing against the poor child," Dr. Cross explained, realising that she had, indeed, been singularly tactless. "She is merely a type, to illustrate my meaning.... And, of course, it's more than possible that if you give her a thoroughly good mental training she may become as intelligent as anyone, in spite of having been so heavily handicapped by her parents' unregulated marriage. That's where the Government Mind Training Course will come in. She'll be developed beyond all belief...." "She won't," said the outraged parent, arranging her infant in her perambulator, "be developed or anythin' else. She's comin' home to bed. And I'd like to know what you mean, ma'am, by unregulated marriage. Our marriage was all right; it was 'ighly approved, and we got money by this baby. It's my opinion you've mixed the two children up, and are taking mine for Mrs. Rose's there, that got taxed, pore mite, owing to Mr. and Mrs. Rose both being in C class." "That's right," someone else cried. "It's the other one that was taxed and ought to be stupid; you've got 'em mixed, ma'am. Better luck next time." Dr. Cross collapsed in some confusion, amid good-humoured laughter, and the infant Rose was also hastily restored to its flattered mother, who, being only C3, did not quite grasp what had occurred except that her baby had been held up for admiration and Mrs. Dean's for obloquy, which was quite right and proper. "One of nature's accidents," apologised Dr. Cross. "They will happen sometimes, of course. So will stupid mistakes.... Better luck next time, as you say." She murmured to Stephen Dixon, "Change the subject at once," so he got upon the tub and began to talk about Democracy, how it should control the state, but couldn't, of course, until it was better educated. "But all these marriage laws," said a painter who was walking out with the vicarage housemaid and foresaw financial ruin if they got married, "they won't help, as I can see, to give _us_ control of the state." Dixon told him he must look to the future, to his children, in fact. The painter threw a forward glance at his children, not yet born; it left him cold. Anyhow, if he married Nellie they'd probably die young, from starvation. But, in the main, Dixon's discourse on democracy was popular. Dixon was a popular speaker with working-men; he had the right touch. But squires did not like him. Captain Ambrose disliked him very much. It was just democracy, and all this socialism, that was spoiling the country. Mr. Delmer ventured to say that he thought the private and domestic lives of the public ought not to be tampered with. "Why not?" enquired Stephen Dixon, and Mr. Delmer had not, at the moment, an answer ready. "When everything else is being tampered with," added Dixon. "And surely the more we tamper (if you put it like that) in the interests of progress, the further removed we are from savages."