interest in impoverished peers; and as it was common knowledge that the late Lord Guisborough, upon the death of his last surviving son, had divided all his unentailed property between his daughter and his more favoured nephew Kenelm, he had never made any attempt to captivate the heir. Lord Guisborough was a bony young man, with a cavernous eye and hollow cheeks, who had been employed for some years on the staff of a firm of left-wing publishers. He was not without ability, but he lacked ballast. An older and a shrewder colleague had once described him as being over-engined for his beam. He was capable of bearing an intelligent part in discussion for just as long as the subject had no bearing on the Kremlin, but the smallest reference to Soviet Russia acted upon his brain like a powerful drug, slaying in an instant his critical faculty, and inspiring him with a fanaticism that dismissed as Capitalist Propaganda all the more displeasing activities of an Asiatic race which from time to time came to light. He had taken no active part in the War, at first because he had conscientiously objected to it; and later, when the enforced participation of Russia in the hostilities had altered his outlook, because he was engaged on Educational Work of paramount importance. This consisted of a series of lectures, which he was perfectly well qualified to deliver, having completed his education at the London School of Economics.
In general, he was by no means popular with the more ruthless sex, most of whom, in defiance of all attempts to enlighten their minds, continued to let instinct govern their impulses, and maintained an obstinate preference for stalwart males who showed every sign of being able and willing to defend their own. Some of these ladies who had spent the war-years doing rescue work in blitzed areas, could scarcely look at him without wishing to hand him a white feather. Mr. Harte, who possessed an elegant leather case containing a row of miniature medals which made his mother's heart swell with pride, was more tolerant. He said that Lord Guisborough's war-time activities were not due to common funk, but to a form of beany intellectualism, and bore him not the slightest illwill for his failure to share in the heat and burden of the day. But he did think that his remarks on the subject of oysters lacked civility to his hostess, and were deserving of punishment, so he remarked, in what he knew his victim would consider an Oxford drawl, that it was extremely doubtful that the masses would appreciate the addition of these bivalves to their diet.
"When oysters were more plentiful," he said affably, "it was one of the articles of indenture for apprentices that they should not be fed on them more than a strictly limited number of times in the week. Which doesn't lead one to suppose that they were very popular, does it?"
Since. his lordship was unable to refute this piece of recondite knowledge, he could think of no adequate retort, and therefore said nothing. So, having successfully put him in his place, Timothy continued in an easy, conversational tone: "Rather odd, the way different foods go in and out of fashion. My mother tells me that when she was a girl, for instance, scallops, which we think very well of, were considered to be too cheap and common to figure on any menu."
"I had the pleasure of meeting your mother at dear Mary Petersfield's party," said Mrs. Haddington. "I should so much like to know her better: what an interesting woman she is! How much I enjoyed her book describing her adventures on the Congo border!"
Timothy, who shared with his half-brother, Mr. James Kane, an ineradicable conviction that the Second World War had been inaugurated by providence to put an end to their beloved but very trying parent's passion for exploring remote quarters of the globe, bowed, and murmured one of the conventional acknowledgements with which the more astute relatives of an author take care to equip themselves.
"Is Norma
In general, he was by no means popular with the more ruthless sex, most of whom, in defiance of all attempts to enlighten their minds, continued to let instinct govern their impulses, and maintained an obstinate preference for stalwart males who showed every sign of being able and willing to defend their own. Some of these ladies who had spent the war-years doing rescue work in blitzed areas, could scarcely look at him without wishing to hand him a white feather. Mr. Harte, who possessed an elegant leather case containing a row of miniature medals which made his mother's heart swell with pride, was more tolerant. He said that Lord Guisborough's war-time activities were not due to common funk, but to a form of beany intellectualism, and bore him not the slightest illwill for his failure to share in the heat and burden of the day. But he did think that his remarks on the subject of oysters lacked civility to his hostess, and were deserving of punishment, so he remarked, in what he knew his victim would consider an Oxford drawl, that it was extremely doubtful that the masses would appreciate the addition of these bivalves to their diet.
"When oysters were more plentiful," he said affably, "it was one of the articles of indenture for apprentices that they should not be fed on them more than a strictly limited number of times in the week. Which doesn't lead one to suppose that they were very popular, does it?"
Since. his lordship was unable to refute this piece of recondite knowledge, he could think of no adequate retort, and therefore said nothing. So, having successfully put him in his place, Timothy continued in an easy, conversational tone: "Rather odd, the way different foods go in and out of fashion. My mother tells me that when she was a girl, for instance, scallops, which we think very well of, were considered to be too cheap and common to figure on any menu."
"I had the pleasure of meeting your mother at dear Mary Petersfield's party," said Mrs. Haddington. "I should so much like to know her better: what an interesting woman she is! How much I enjoyed her book describing her adventures on the Congo border!"
Timothy, who shared with his half-brother, Mr. James Kane, an ineradicable conviction that the Second World War had been inaugurated by providence to put an end to their beloved but very trying parent's passion for exploring remote quarters of the globe, bowed, and murmured one of the conventional acknowledgements with which the more astute relatives of an author take care to equip themselves.
"Is Norma
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