d an old woman come to me this morning at my office," he said. "I
asked her how it was they were always losing their pawn-tickets. I told
her I never lost mine." Osmond Orgreave was encircled with laughter.
Edwin laughed heartily. It was a good joke. And even mediocre jokes
would convulse the room.

Jos Curtenty, the renowned card, a jolly old gentleman of sixty, was in
the chair, and therefore jollity was assured in advance. Rising to
inaugurate the oratorical section of the night, he took an enormous red
flower from a bouquet behind him, and sticking it with a studiously
absent air in his button-hole, said blandly, "Gentlemen, no politics,
please!" The uproarious effect was one of his very best. He knew his
audience. He could have taught Edwin a thing or two. For Edwin in his
simplicity was astonished to find the audience almost all of one colour,
frankly and joyously and optimistically Tory. There were not ten
Liberals in the place, and there was not one who was vocal. The cream
of the town, of its brains, its success, its respectability, was
assembled together, and the Liberal party was practically unrepresented.
It seemed as if there was no Liberal party. It seemed impossible that
a Labour candidate could achieve anything but complete disaster at the
polls. It seemed incredible that in the past a Liberal candidate had
ever been returned. Edwin began, even in the privacy of his own heart,
to be apologetic for his Liberalism. All these excellent fellows could
not be wrong. The moral force of numbers intimidated him. He suspected
that there was, after all, more to be said for Conservatism than he had
hitherto allowed himself to suppose.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THREE.

And the Felons were so good-humoured and kindly and so free-handed, and,
with it all, so boyish! They burst into praise of one another on the
slenderest excuse. They ordered more champagne as carelessly as though
champagne were ginger-beer (Edwin was glad that by an excess of
precaution he had brought two pounds in his pocket--the scale of
expenditure was staggering); and they nonchalantly smoked cigars that
would have made Edwin sick. They knew all about cigars and about
drinks, and they implied by their demeanour, though they never said,
that a first-class drink and a first-class smoke were the `good things'
of life, the ultimate rewards; the references to women were sly...
Edw