gallant experiments in statement that are necessary for good

conversation. They would watch one talking with an expression

exactly like peeping through bushes. Then they would, as it were,

dash out, dissent succinctly, contradict some secondary fact, and

back to cover. They gave one twilight nerves. Their wives were

easier but still difficult at a stretch; they talked a good deal

about children and servants, but with an air caught from Altiora of

making observations upon sociological types. Lewis gossiped about

the House in an entirely finite manner. He never raised a

discussion; nobody ever raised a discussion. He would ask what we

thought of Evesham's question that afternoon, and Edward would say

it was good, and Mrs. Willie, who had been behind the grille, would

think it was very good, and then Willie, parting the branches, would

say rather conclusively that he didn't think it was very much good,

and I would deny hearing the question in order to evade a profitless

statement of views in that vacuum, and then we would cast about in

our minds for some other topic of equal interest…

On this occasion Altiora was absent, and to qualify our Young

Liberal bleakness we had Mrs. Millingham, with her white hair and

her fresh mind and complexion, and Esmeer. Willie Crampton was with

us, but not his wife, who was having her third baby on principle;

his brother Edward was present, and the Lewises, and of course the

Bunting Harblows. There was also some other lady. I remember her

as pale blue, but for the life of me I cannot remember her name.

Quite early there was a little breeze between Edward Crampton and

Esmeer, who had ventured an opinion about the partition of Poland.

Edward was at work then upon the seventh volume of his monumental

Life of Kosciusko, and a little impatient with views perhaps not

altogether false but betraying a lamentable ignorance of accessible

literature. At any rate, his correction of Esmeer was magisterial.

After that there was a distinct and not altogether delightful pause,

and then some one, it may have been the pale-blue lady, asked Mrs.

Lewis whether her aunt Lady Carmixter had returned from her rest-

and-sun-cure in Italy. That led to a rather anxiously sustained

talk about regimen, and Willie told us how he had profited by the

no-breakfast system. It had increased his power of work enormously.

He could get through ten hours a day now without inconvenience.

"What do you do?" said Esmeer abruptly.

"Oh! no end of work. There's all the estate and looking after

things."

"But publicly?"

"I asked three questions yesterday. And for one of them I had to

consult nine books!"

We were drifting, I could see, towards Doctor Haig's system of

dietary, and whether the exclusion or inclusion of fish and chicken

were most conducive to high efficiency, when Britten, who had

refused lemonade and claret and demanded Burgundy, broke out, and

was discovered to be demanding in his throat just what we Young

Liberals thought we were up to?

"I want," said Britten, repeating his challenge a little louder, "to

hear just exactly what you think you are doing in Parliament?"

Lewis laughed nervously, and thought we were "Seeking the Good of

the Community."

"HOW?"

"Beneficient Legislation," said Lewis.

"Beneficient in what direction?" insisted Britten. "I want to know

where you think you are going."

"Amelioration of Social Conditions," said Lewis.

"That's only a phrase!"

"You wouldn't have me sketch bills at dinner?"

"I'd like you to indicate directions," said Britten, and waited.

"Upward and On," said Lewis with conscious neatness, and turned to

ask Mrs. Bunting Harblow about her little boy's French.

For a time talk frothed over Britten's head, but the natural

mischief in Mrs. Millingham had been stirred, and she was presently

echoing his demand in lisping, quasi-confidential undertones. "What

ARE we Liberals doing?" Then Esmeer fell in with the

revolutionaries.

To begin with, I was a little shocked by this clamour for

fundamentals-and a little disconcerted. I had the experience that

I suppose comes to every one at times of discovering oneself

together with two different sets of people with whom one has

maintained two different sets of attitudes. It had always been, I

perceived, an instinctive suppression in our circle that we

shouldn't be more than vague about our political ideals. It had

almost become part of my morality to respect this convention. It

was understood we were all working hard, and keeping ourselves fit,

tremendously fit, under Altiora's inspiration, Pro Bono Publico.

Bunting Harblow had his under-secretaryship, and Lewis was on the

verge of the Cabinet, and these things we considered to be in the

nature of confirmations… It added to tbe discomfort of the

situation that these plunging enquiries were being made in the

presence of our wives.

The rebel section of our party forced the talk.

Edward Crampton was presently declaring-I forget in what relation:

"The country is with us."