"Whatever Postlewaite is, it don't excuse you. He says you were all talking the rankest Socialism, and he was quite within his rights not to give you the book."
"I repeat, Frederick, that Postlewaite is an ass. If the Postlewaites of the earth think for one moment that the Victors of Rodova will turn the other cheek to the retort discourteous, the sooner they learn otherwise the better it will be for them and those whom they serve."
"Hear, hear, and cheers," said my gallant little friend, Mrs. Josiah P. Perkins, in spite of the fact that the Great Lady had fixed her with her invincible north eye.
"Ferdinand Rex one doesn't mind so much," proceeded Frederick, "and the Princess is all right of course, and von Schalk is a bit of a Bismarck, they say; but when you come to foot the bill with Odo Arbuthnot, M.P.—well, as Postlewaite says, it is nothing less than an act of vandalism. The M.P. fairly cooked my goose, I must say."
The M.P. was very bad form, everybody agreed, with the honourable and gallant exception of la belle Americaine.
"Might be a labour member! I don't know what Dick'll say when he sees it."
"Two alternatives present themselves to my mind," said I, impenitently. "Postlewaite can either clear off the whole thing before he returns, or else append a magic 'C' in brackets after the offending symbols."
"You ain't entitled to a 'C' in brackets. You grow a worse Radical every day of your life and everybody is agreed that it is time you came out in your true colours."
"Hear, hear," from the table.
"I've half a mind to oppose you myself at the next election as a convinced Tariff Reformer, Anti-Socialist, Fair Play for Everybody, and official representative of a poor but deserving class."