“Come and dine with us, Wilfrid,” says his aunt; “we never see you now. I assure you a good dinner changes the colour of political opinions in a wonderful degree. I am dreadfully afraid that you have been living on boiled soles and carrot fritters.”
Bertram smiles slightly. “The carrot fritters; not the soles. I am a vegetarian.”
“But we are justified in being carnivorous,” says Southwold, very eagerly. “Individualism justifies us.”
Marlow repeats with emphasis: “We are justified in being carnivorous. Individualism justifies us.”
“Certainly,” says Bertram, with uncivil sarcasm. “The crocodile has a right to its appetites, and the cur to its vomit. Solomon said so.”
“Am I the crocodile or the cur?” asks Southwold.
“Do you keep Critchett on carrot fritters?” asks Marlow, “and what does he have to drink? Hot water? Hot water is, I believe, the beverege which nowadays accompanies high thinking.”
“And how do you reconcile your conscience and your creeds to keeping a Critchett at all?” repeats Lady Jane.
Bertram replies with distant chillness and proud humility: “The leaven of long habit is hard to get rid of; I entirely agree with you that I am in the wrong. To have a servant at all is an offence to humanity; it is an impertinence to the brotherhood of our common mortality.”
“Don’t be afraid,” says Southwold, grimly, “our brothers and sisters in the servants’ halls pay us out for the outrage; they take away our characters, read our correspondence, and pocket twenty per cent. on all our bills.”