"I know that," Roger answered. "That's why I don't get on with women. They find me out. No," he continued, "I've no experience of women in that way. I daresay I shall get experience some day, but in the meantime, I've got my job to do...."
"We shall have a virgin Lord Chancellor on the woolsack," said Gilbert, "and then may God have mercy on all poor litigants!"
"We really ought to go to bed," Ninian protested.
"Not yet," Henry exclaimed.
He had recovered from his feeling of dejection, and he was eager to retrieve the good opinion which he thought he had lost.
"My own view," he said, beginning as they always began their oracular pronouncements, "my own view is that we make the mistake of thinking in masses instead of in individuals. Everybody who tries to reform the world, tries to make it uniform, but what we want is the most complete diversity that's obtainable. It's the variations from type that make type bearable!..."
"That's a good phrase, Quinny. Where'd you get it from?" Gilbert interrupted.
Henry flushed with pleasure. "I made it up," he answered. "All men are different," he went on, "and therefore the morals that suit one person are unlikely to suit another person. Roger doesn't bother about women. He looks upon them as a ... a sideline. Don't you, Roger? He'll marry in due course, and he'll have one woman, and he'll have her all to himself. Won't you, Roger?"
"Probably," Roger replied, "but there's no certainty about these things."
Henry proceeded. "Gilbert wants lots and lots of women, but he doesn't want to talk about it, and he wants to keep his women and his work separate ... in watertight compartments, as it were. As if you could do that! And Ninian wants to have a good old hearty coarse time like ... like Tom Jones ... and then he'll repent and praise God and lay his stick about the backsides of all the young sinners he meets!"