“Mr. Hedgekick is perfectly charming,” said Helen, sticking up for her friends.
“Hedgekick?” asked Lady Massingberd in an awestruck voice.
“Yes, darling: Hedgekick. Why not? Talbot is just as funny, so is anything beginning with Fitz. I wish you wouldn’t interrupt when Henry is talking about me.”
“And the worst of all the miserable business,” said Lord Thorley, “is that you think you are being democratic and open-minded, and are among those who say, ‘One man is as good as another,’ and ‘God made us all.’ You don’t really think anything of the sort. A few men are much better than the others, and the others can go hang. You worship success. Could there be anything narrower or less democratic?”
“Anyhow, I had a suffragette to dinner,” remarked Lady Grote. “She was a criminal, too: she had scragged some picture in the Royal Academy and was sent to prison.”
“That was precisely why you asked her to dinner. She was in the world’s eye.”
“Like a cinder from the engine,” said Lady Massingberd.
“Exactly. And if a notorious murderer was allowed to go out to dinner, you would certainly ask him the night before he was hanged.”
Lady Grote did not attempt to defend herself.
“Yes, that’s all quite true as far as it goes,” she said. “But it doesn’t go far enough.”