"Weren't you listening? We're to be Improved Tories ... and we're to improve the Universe, so to speak. We've just settled it. All the Old Birds are to be hoofed out of office, and we're to take their places, and I thoroughly approve of that. In my opinion, any man who wants to occupy a place of authority after the age of sixty should be publicly and cruelly pole-axed. I can't stand old men ... they're so cowardly and so obstinate and so conceited!"
"The great thing," said Roger, "is to keep ourselves from sloppiness. We mustn't make fools of ourselves!"
"The principal way in which a man makes a fool of himself," Gilbert added, "is in connexion with the female species. Is that what you mean, Roger?" Roger nodded his head. "Pay attention to that, Ninian," Gilbert went on. "You have a weakness for females, I've noticed!"
Ninian, suddenly forgetting his fatigue, sat up in his seat. "I say, let's jaw about women," he said.
"No," Gilbert replied. "We won't ... not at this hour of the morning!" But, disregarding his decision, he went on, "My view of women is that we all make too much fuss about 'em! Either we damn them excessively or we praise them excessively. They're a cursed nuisance in literature. All the writers seem to think that man was made for woman or woman for man, and they write and write about sex and love as if there weren't other things in the world besides women!"
"I'd like to know what else we were made for?" Henry said.
"We were made to do our jobs," Roger answered. "I believe in what I may call the modified anchorite ... women are too emotional and get between a man and his work. Love is an excellent thing ... excellent ... but there are other things!..."
"What else is there?" Henry demanded almost crossly. He felt vaguely stirred by what was being said, vaguely antagonistic to it.
"Oh, lots of things," Roger answered. "Fighting for your place, moving multitudes to do your will ... oh, lots of things!"
Gilbert had read some of Henry's novel, and he now began to talk about it.