g his self-possession_] I am sound on the Garden of
Eden. I have heard of Darwin.

SAVVY. But Darwin is all rot.

LUBIN. What! Already!

SAVVY. It's no good your smiling at me like a Cheshire cat, Mr Lubin;
and I am not going to sit here mumchance like an old-fashioned goody
goody wife while you men monopolize the conversation and pay out the
very ghastliest exploded drivel as the latest thing in politics. I am
not giving you my own ideas, Mr Lubin, but just the regular orthodox
science of today. Only the most awful old fossils think that Socialism
is bad economics and that Darwin invented Evolution. Ask Papa. Ask
Uncle. Ask the first person you meet in the street. [_She rises and
crosses to Haslam_]. Give me a cigaret, Bill, will you?

HASLAM. Priceless. [_He complies_].

FRANKLYN. Savvy has not lived long enough to have any manners, Mr Lubin;
but that is where you stand with the younger generation. Dont smoke,
dear.

_Savvy, with a shrug of rather mutinous resignation, throws the cigaret
into the fire. Haslam, on the point of lighting one for himself, changes
his mind._

LUBIN [_shrewd and serious_] Mr Barnabas: I confess I am surprised; and
I will not pretend that I am convinced. But I am open to conviction. I
may be wrong.

BURGE [_in a burst of irony_] Oh no. Impossible! Impossible!

LUBIN. Yes, Mr Barnabas, though I do not possess Burge's genius for
being always wrong, I have been in that position once or twice. I could
not conceal from you, even if I wished to, that my time has been so
completely filled by my professional work as a lawyer, and later on
by my duties as leader of the House of Commons in the days when Prime
Ministers were also leaders--

BURGE [_stung_] Not to mention bridge and smart society.

LUBIN.--not to mention the continual and trying effort to make Burge
behave himself, that I have not been able to keep my academic reading up
to date. I have kept my classics brushed up out of sheer love for them;
but my economics and my science, such as they were, may possibly be a
little rusty. Yet I think I may say that if you and your brother will
be so good as to put me on the track of the necessary documents, I will
undertake to put the case to the House or to the country to your entire
satisfaction. You see, as long as you can shew these troublesome
half-educated people who want to turn the world upside down that they
are talking nonsense, it really does not matter very much whether you d