Sir Timothy was the principal landlord, and, socially, the most important person in the neighbourhood. Sir Timothy did not like Mr. Courtney. He was of opinion that the R.M. was inclined to take a high hand at Petty Sessions and to bully the other magistrates—Sir Timothy was himself a magistrate—who sat with him on the Bench. He also thought that Mr. Courtney was “too d——d superior” in private life. Sir Timothy had the lowest possible opinion of the progress made by civilization in his own time. The Civilization of the Future, about which Mr. Courtney talked a great deal, seemed to Sir Timothy a nasty kind of nightmare.
It was natural, almost inevitable, that Sir Timothy should take a conservative view on the subject of the new time.
“I don’t see the use of playing silly tricks with the clock,” he said. “You might just as well say that I’d live ten years longer if everybody agreed to say that I’m forty-eight instead of fifty-eight. I’d still be fifty-eight in reality. It’s just the same with the time. We may all make up our minds to pretend it’s eight o’clock when it’s really seven, but it will still be seven.”
Mr. Courtney smiled in a gentle, but very annoying manner.
“My dear Sir Timothy,” he said, “don’t you see that what is really wanted is a complete change in the habits of the population? We’ve been gradually slipping into wasteful ways of living. Our expenditure on artificial light———”
“I know all about that,” said Sir Timothy. “If you’ve said it to me once, you’ve said it a dozen times, and last year I did alter my clocks. But this year—hang it all! They’re sticking another twenty-five minutes on it. If they go on at this rate, moving us back an extra half hour every May, we’ll be living in the middle of the night before we die.”
“I’m sorry to hear you taking up that question of the so-called Irish time,” said Mr. Courtney. “Reactionary patriotism——”
Sir Timothy spluttered. Being an Irish gentleman, he hated to be accused of patriotism, which he held—following Dr. Johnson—to be the last refuge of a scoundrel.
“There’s nothing patriotic about it,” he said. “What I object to hasn’t anything to do with any particular country. It’s simply a direct insult to the sun.”
“The sun,” said Mr. Courtney, smiling more offensively than ever, “can take care of itself.”