Alice. "You mean the book about Kashmir.
But I thought the author was an old man."

"Lewie is not very old," said his aunt; "but I haven't seen him for
years, so he may be decrepit by this time. He is coming home soon, he
says, but he never writes. I know two of his friends who pay a Private
Inquiry Office to send them news of him."

Alice laughed and became silent. What merry haphazard people were these
she had fallen among! At home everything was docketed and ordered.
Meals were immovable feasts, the hour for bed and the hour for rising
were more regular than the sun's. Her father was full of proverbs on
the virtue of regularity, and was wont to attribute every vice and
misfortune to its absence. And yet here were men and women who got on
very well without it. She did not wholly like it. The little
doctrinaire in her revolted and she was pleased to be censorious.

"You are a very learned young woman, aren't you?" said Lady Manorwater,
after a short silence. "I have heard wonderful stories about your
learning. Then I hope you will talk to Mr. Stocks, for I am afraid he
is shocked at Bertha's frivolity. He asked her if she was in favour of
the Prisons Regulation Bill, and she was very rude."

"I only said," broke in Miss Afflint, "that owing to my lack of definite
local knowledge I was not in a position to give an answer commensurate
with the gravity of the subject." She spoke in a perfect imitation of
the tone of a pompous man.

"Bertha, I do not approve of you," said Lady Manorwater. "I forbid you
to mimic Mr. Stocks. He is very clever, and very much in earnest over
everything. I don't wonder that a butterfly like you should laugh, but
I hope Miss Wishart will be kind to him."

"I am afraid I am very ignorant," said Alice hastily, "and I am very
useless. I never did any work of any sort in my life, and when I think
of you I am ashamed."

"Oh, my dear child, please don't think me a paragon," cried her hostess
in horror. "I am a creature of vague enthusiasms and I have the sense
to know it. Sometimes I fancy I am a woman of business, and then I take
up half a dozen things till Jack has to interfere to prevent financial
ruin. I dabble in politics and I dabble in philanthropy; I write review
articles which nobody reads, and I make speeches which are a horror to
myself and a misery to my hearers. Only by the possession of a sense of
humour am I saved from insignificance."

To Alice the speech was the breaking of i