hat is her objection to us? We are clean, we are fairly
intelligent--"

"My dear Peter, do you think I haven't said all that, and a hundred
things more? A woman! she gets an idea into her head, and every argument
against it hammers it in further. She has gained her notion of what she
calls Bohemia from the comic journals. It's our own fault, we have done
it ourselves. There's no persuading her that it's a libel."

"Won't she see a few of us--judge for herself? There's Porson--why
Porson might have been a bishop. Or Somerville--Somerville's Oxford
accent is wasted here. It has no chance."

"It isn't only that," explained Joey; "she has ambitions, social
ambitions. She thinks that if we begin with the wrong set, we'll never
get into the right. We have three friends at present, and, so far as I
can see, are never likely to have any more. My dear boy, you'd never
believe there could exist such bores. There's a man and his wife named
Holyoake. They dine with us on Thursdays, and we dine with them on
Tuesdays. Their only title to existence consists in their having a
cousin in the House of Lords; they claim no other right themselves. He
is a widower, getting on for eighty. Apparently he's the only relative
they have, and when he dies, they talk of retiring into the country.
There's a fellow named Cutler, who visited once at Marlborough House in
connection with a charity. You'd think to listen to him that he had
designs upon the throne. The most tiresome of them all is a noisy woman
who, as far as I can make out, hasn't any name at all. 'Miss Montgomery'
is on her cards, but that is only what she calls herself. Who she really
is! It would shake the foundations of European society if known. We sit
and talk about the aristocracy; we don't seem to know anybody else. I
tried on one occasion a little sarcasm as a corrective--recounted
conversations between myself and the Prince of Wales, in which I
invariably addressed him as 'Teddy.' It sounds tall, I know, but those
people took it in. I was too astonished to undeceive them at the time,
the consequence is I am a sort of little god to them. They come round me
and ask for more. What am I to do? I am helpless among them. I've
never had anything to do before with the really first-prize idiot; the
usual type, of course, one knows, but these, if you haven't met them, are
inconceivable. I try insulting them; they don't even know I am insulting
them. Short