“Poor Michael!” said his aunt’s soft voice: “Let him finish his stew, Hilary.”

But Michael had dropped his fork for good; he saw another kind of stew before him.

“The General Slum Conversion Fund,” went on Hilary, “affiliating every Slum Conversion Society in being or to be, so long as it conforms to the principle of not displacing the present inhabitant. Don’t you see what a pull that gives us over the inhabitants?—we start them straight, and we jolly well see that they don’t let their houses down again.”

“But can you?” said Michael.

“Ah! you’ve heard stories of baths being used for coal and vegetables, and all that. Take it from me, they’re exaggerated, Michael. Anyway, that’s where we private workers come in with a big advantage over municipal authorities. They have to drive, we try to lead.”

“Let me hot up your stew, dear?” said his aunt.

Michael refused. He perceived that it would need no hotting up! Another crusade! His Uncle Hilary had always fascinated him with his crusading blood—at the time of the Crusades the name had been Keroual, and, now spelt Charwell, was pronounced Cherwell, in accordance with the sound English custom of worrying foreigners.

“I’m not approaching you, Michael, with the inducement that you should make your name at this, because, after all, you’re a gent!”

“Thank you!” murmured Michael; “always glad of a kind word.”

“No. I’m suggesting that you ought to do something, considering your luck in life.”

“I quite agree,” said Michael, humbly. “The question seems to be: Is this the something?”

“It is, undoubtedly,” said his uncle, waving a salt-spoon on which was engraved the Charwell crest. “What else can it be?”

“Did you never hear of Foggartism, Uncle Hilary?”

“No; what’s that?”

“My aunt!” said Michael.

“Some blanc-mange, dear?”

“Not you, Aunt May! But did you really never hear of it, Uncle Hilary?”

“Foggartism? Is it that fog-abating scheme one reads about?”

“It is not,” said Michael. “Of course, you’re sunk in misery and sin here. Still, it’s almost too thick. YOU’VE heard of it, Aunt May?”

His aunt’s eyebrows became intricate again.

“I think,” she said, “I do remember hearing someone say it was balderdash!”

Michael groaned: “And you, Mr. James?”

“It’s to do with the currency, isn’t it?”

“And here,” said Michael, “we have three intelligent, public-spirited persons, who’ve never heard of Foggartism—and I’ve heard of nothing else for over a year.”

“Well,” said Hilary, “had you heard of my slum-conversion scheme?”

“Certainly not.”

“I think,” said his aunt, “it would be an excellent thing if you’d smoke while I make the coffee. Now I do remember, Michael: Your mother did say to me that she wished you would get over it. I’d forgotten the name. It had to do with taking town-children away from their parents.”

“Partly,” said Michael, with gloom.

“You have to remember, dear, that the poorer people are, the more they cling to their children.”

“Vicarious joy in life,” put in Hilary.

“And the poorer children are, the more they cling to their gutters, as I was telling you.”

Michael buried his hands in his pockets.

“There is no good in me,” he said, stonily. “You’ve pitched on a stumer, Uncle Hilary.”

Both Hilary and his wife got up very quickly, and each put a hand on his shoulder.

“My dear boy!” said his aunt.

“God bless you!” said Hilary: “Have a ‘gasper.’”

“All right,” said Michael, grinning, “it’s wholesome.”

Whether or not it was the “gasper” that was wholesome, he took and lighted it from his uncle’s.

“What is the most pitiable sight in the world, Aunt May—I mean, next to seeing two people dance the Charleston?”

“The most pitiable sight?” said his aunt, dreamily. “Oh! I think—a rich man listening to a bad gramophone.”

“Wrong!” said Michael. “The most pitiable sight in the world is a politician barking up the right tree. Behold him!”

“Look out, May! Your machine’s boiling. She makes very good coffee, Michael—nothing like it for the grumps. Have some, and then James and I will show you the houses we’ve converted. James—come with me a moment.”

“Noted for his pertinacity,” muttered Michael, as they disappeared.

“Not only noted, Michael—dreaded.”

“Well, I would rather be Uncle Hilary than anybody I know.”

“He IS rather a dear,” murmured his aunt. “Coffee?”

“What does he really believe, Aunt May?”

“Well, he hardly has time for that.”

“Ah! that’s the new hope of the Church. All the rest is just as much an attempt to improve on mathematics as Einstein’s theory. Orthodox religion was devised for the cloister, Aunt May, and there aren’t any cloisters left.”

“Religion,” said his aunt, dreamily, “used to burn a good many people, Michael, not in cloisters.”

“Quite so, when it emerged from cloisters, religion used to be red-hot politics; then it became caste feeling, and now it’s a cross—word puzzle—You don’t solve THEM with your emotions.”

His aunt smiled.

“You have a dreadful way of putting things, my dear.”

“In our ‘suckles,’ Aunt May, we do nothing but put things—it destroys all motive power. But about this slum business: do you really advise me to have ‘a go’?”

“Not if you want a quiet life.”

“I don’t know that I do. I did, after the war; but not now. But, you see, I’ve tried Foggartism and everybody’s too sane to look at it. I really can’t afford to back another loser. Do you think there’s a chance of getting a national move on?”

“Only a sporting chance, dear.”

“Would you take it up then, if you were me?”

“My dear, I’m prejudiced—Hilary’s heart is so set on it; but it does seem to me that there’s no other cause I’d so gladly fail in. Well, not that exactly; but there really is nothing so important as giving our town dwellers decent living conditions.”

“It’s rather like going over to the enemy,” muttered Michael. “Our future oughtn’t to be so bound up in the towns.”

“It WILL be, whatever’s done. ‘A bird in the hand,’ and such a big bird, Michael. Ah! Here’s Hilary!”

Hilary and his architect took Michael forth again into the Meads. The afternoon had turned drizzly, and the dismal character of that flowerless quarter was more than ever apparent. Up street, down street, Hilary extolled the virtues of his parishoners. They drank, but not nearly so much as was natural in the circumstances; they were dirty, but he would be dirtier under their conditions. They didn’t come to church—who on earth would expect them to? They assaulted their wives to an almost negligible extent; were extraordinarily good, and extremely unwise, to their children. They had the most marvellous faculty for living on what was not a living wage. They helped each other far better than those who could afford to; never saved a bean, having no beans to save, and took no thought for a morrow which might be worse than today. Institutions they abominated. They were no more moral than was natural in their overcrowded state. Of philosophy they had plenty, of religion none that he could speak of. Their amusements were cinemas, streets, gaspers, public houses, and Sunday papers. They liked a tune, and would dance if afforded a chance. They had their own brand of honesty, which required special study. Unhappy? Not precisely, having given up a future state in this life or in that—realists to their encrusted fingernails. English? Well, nearly all, and mostly London-born. A few country folk had come in young, and would never go out old.

“You’d like them, Michael; nobody who really knows them can help liking them. And now, my dear fellow, good-bye, and think it over. The hope of England lies in you young men. God bless you!”

And with these words in his ears, Michael went home, to find his little son sickening for measles.