“Yes, Sir Lawrence; just come in.”

The “last of the squires” was, indeed, in front of the tape. His rosy face, with clipped white moustache, and hard, little, white whiskers, was held as if the news had come to him, not he to the news. Banks might inflate and Governments fall, wars break out and strikes collapse, but there would be no bending of that considerable waist, no flickering in the steady blue stare from under eyebrows a little raised at their outer ends. Rather bald, and clipped in what hair was left, never did man look more perfectly shaved; and the moustache ending exactly where the lips ended, gave an extreme firmness to the general good humour of an open-air face.

Looking from him to his own father—thin, quick, twisting, dark, as full of whims as a bog is of snipe—Michael was impressed. A whim, to Wilfred Bentworth, would be strange fowl indeed! ‘However he’s managed to keep out of politics,’ thought Michael, ‘I can’t conceive.’

“‘Squire’—my son—a sucking statesman. We’ve come to ask you to lead a forlorn hope. Don’t smile! You’re ‘for it,’ as they say in this Bonzoid age. We propose to shelter ourselves behind you in the breach.”

“Eh! What? Sit down! What’s all this?”

“It’s a matter of the slums, ‘if you know what I mean,’ as the lady said. But go ahead, Michael!”

Michael went ahead. Having developed his uncle’s thesis and cited certain figures, he embroidered them with as much picturesque detail as he could remember, feeling rather like a fly attacking the flanks of an ox and watching his tail.

“When you drive a nail into the walls, sir,” he ended, “things come out.”

“Good God!” said the squire suddenly. “Good God!”

“One doubts the good, there,” put in Sir Lawrence.

The squire stared.

“Irreverent beggar,” he said. “I don’t know Charwell; they say he’s cracked.”

“Hardly that,” murmured Sir Lawrence; “merely unusual, like most members of really old families.”

The early English specimen in the chair before him twinkled.

“The Charwells, you know,” went on Sir Lawrence, “were hoary when that rascally lawyer, the first Mont, founded us under James the First.”

“Oh!” said the squire. “Are you one of HIS precious creations? I didn’t know.”

“You’re not familiar with the slums, sir?” said Michael, feeling that they must not wander in the mazes of descent.

“What! No. Ought to be, I suppose. Poor devils!”

“It’s not so much,” said Michael, cunningly, “the humanitarian side, as the deterioration of stock, which is so serious.”

“M’m?” said the squire. “Do you know anything about stock-breeding?”

Michael shook his head.

“Well, you can take it from me that it’s nearly all heredity. You could fat a slum population, but you can’t change their character!”

“I don’t think there’s anything very wrong with their character,” said Michael. “The children are predominantly fair, which means, I suppose, that they’ve still got the Anglo–Saxon qualities.”

He saw his father cock an eye. “Quite the diplomat!” he seemed saying.

“Whom have you got in mind for this committee?” asked the squire, abruptly.

“My father,” said Michael; “and we’d thought of the Marquess of Shropshire—”

“Very long in the tooth.”

“But very spry,” said Sir Lawrence. “Still game to electrify the world.”

“Who else?”

“Sir Timothy Fanfield—”

“That fire-eating old buffer! Yes?”

“Sir Thomas Morsell—”

“M’m!”

Michael hurried on: “Or any other medical man you thought better of, sir.”

“There are none. Are you sure about the bugs?”

“Absolutely!”

“Well, I should have to see Charwell. I’m told he can gammon the hind-leg off a donkey.”

“Hilary’s a good fellow,” put in Sir Lawrence; “a really good fellow, ‘squire.’”

“Well, Mont, if I take to him, I’ll come in. I don’t like vermin.”

“A great national movement, sir,” began Michael, “and nobody—”

The squire shook his head.

“Don’t make any mistake,” he said. “May get a few pounds, perhaps—get rid of a few bugs; but national movements—no such things in this country.”…

“Stout fellow,” said Sir Lawrence when they were going down the steps again; “never been enthusiastic in his life. He’ll make a splendid chairman. I think we’ve got him, Michael. You played your bugs well. We’d better try the Marquess next. Even a duke will serve under Bentworth, they know he’s of older family than themselves, and there’s something about him.”

“Yes, what is it?”

“Well, he isn’t thinking about himself; he never gets into the air; and he doesn’t give a damn for anyone or anything.”

“There must be something more than that,” said Michael.

“Well, there is. The fact is, he thinks as England really thinks, and not as it thinks it thinks.”

“By Jove!” said Michael. “‘Some’ diagnosis! Shall we dine, sir?”

“Yes, let’s go to the Parthenaeum! When they made me a member there, I used to think I should never go in, but d’you know, I use it quite a lot. It’s more like the East than anything else in London. A Yogi could ask for nothing better. I go in and I sit in a trance until it’s time for me to come out again. There isn’t a sound; nobody comes near me. There’s no vulgar material comfort. The prevailing colour is that of the Ganges. And there’s more inaccessible wisdom in the place than you could find anywhere else in the West. We’ll have the club dinner. It’s calculated to moderate all transports. Lunch, of course, you can’t get if you’ve a friend with you. One must draw the line somewhere at hospitality.”

“Now,” he resumed, when they had finished moderating their transports, “let’s go and see the Marquess! I haven’t set eyes on the old boy since that Marjorie Ferrar affair. We’ll hope he hasn’t got gout.”…

In Curzon Street, they found that the Marquess had finished dinner and gone back to his study.

“Don’t wake him if he’s asleep,” said Sir Lawrence.

“The Marquess is never asleep, Sir Lawrence.”

He was writing when they were ushered in, and stopped to peer at them round the corner of his bureau.

“Ah, young Mont!” he said. “How pleasant!” Then paused rather abruptly. “Nothing to do with my grand-daughter, I trust?”

“Far from it, Marquess. We just want your help in a public work on behalf of the humble. It’s a slum proposition, as the Yanks say.”

The Marquess shook his head.

“I don’t like interfering with the humble; the humbler people are, the more one ought to consider their feelings.”

“We’re absolutely with you there, sir; but let my son explain.”

“Sit down, then.” And the Marquess rose, placed his foot on his chair, and leaning his elbow on his knee, inclined his head to one side. For the second time that evening Michael plunged into explanation.

“Bentworth?” said the Marquess. “His shorthorns are good; a solid fellow, but behind the times.”

“That’s why we want you, Marquess.”

“My dear young Mont, I’m too old.”

“It’s precisely because you’re so young that we came to you.”

“Frankly, sir,” said Michael, “we thought you’d like to be on the committee of appeal, because in my uncle’s policy there’s electrification of the kitchens; we must have someone who’s an authority on that and can keep it to the fore.”

“Ah!” said the Marquess. “Hilary Charwell—I once heard him preach in St. Paul’s—most amusing! What do the slum-dwellers say to electrification?”

“Nothing till it’s done, of course, but once it’s done, it’s everything to them, sir.”

“H’m!” said the Marquess. “H’m! It would appear that there are no flies on your uncle.”

“We hope,” pursued Michael, “that, with electrification, there will soon be no flies on anything else.”

The Marquess nodded. “It’s the right end of the stick. I’ll think of it. My trouble is that I’ve no money; and I don’t like appealing to others without putting down something substantial myself.”