CULVER. You'd better not.
TRANTO. You deserve more than a baronetcy. Your department has been a striking success—one of the very few in the whole length of Whitehall.
CULVER. I know my department has been a success. But that's not why I'm offered a baronetcy. Good heavens, I haven't even spoken to any member of the War Cabinet yet. I've been trying to for about a year, but in spite of powerful influences to help me I've never been able to bring off a meeting with the mandarins. No! I'm offered a baronetcy because I'm respectable; I'm decent; and at the last moment they thought the List looked a bit too thick—so they pushed me in. One of their brilliant afterthoughts!... No damned merit about the thing, I can tell you!
TRANTO. Do you mean you intend to refuse?
CULVER. Do you mean you ever imagined that I should accept? Me, in the same galley with Brill—who daren't go into his own clubs—and Ullivant, and a few more pretty nearly as bad! Of course, I shall refuse. Nothing on earth would induce me to accept. Nothing! ( More calmly .) Mind you, I don't blame the Government; probably the Government can't help itself. Therefore the Government must be helped; and sometimes the best way to help a fellow creature is to bring him to his senses by catching him one across the jaw.
TRANTO. Why are you making a secret of it? The offer is surely bound to come out.
CULVER. Of course. I'm only making a secret of it for the moment, while I prepare the domestic ground for my refusal.
TRANTO. You wish me to understand—
CULVER. You know what women are. ( With caution .) I speak of the sex in general.
TRANTO. I see.