Altiora wasn't at this dinner. When she came matters were apt to
become confusedly strenuous. There was always a slight and
ineffectual struggle at the end on the part of Margaret to
anticipate Altiora's overpowering tendency to a rally and the
establishment of some entirely unjustifiable conclusion by a COUP-
DE-MAIN. When, however, Altiora was absent, the quieter influence
of the Cramptons prevailed; temperance and information for its own
sake prevailed excessively over dinner and the play of thought. . . .
Good Lord! what bores the Cramptons were! I wonder I endured
them as I did. They had all of them the trick of lying in wait
conversationally; they had no sense of the self-exposures, the
gallant experiments in statement that are necessary for good
conversation. They would watch one talking with an expression
exactly like peeping through bushes. Then they would, as it were,
dash out, dissent succinctly, contradict some secondary fact, and
back to cover. They gave one twilight nerves. Their wives were
easier but still difficult at a stretch; they talked a good deal
about children and servants, but with an air caught from Altiora of
making observations upon sociological types. Lewis gossiped about
the House in an entirely finite manner. He never raised a
discussion; nobody ever raised a discussion. He would ask what we
thought of Evesham's question that afternoon, and Edward would say
it was good, and Mrs. Willie, who had been behind the grille, would
think it was very good, and then Willie, parting the branches, would
say rather conclusively that he didn't think it was very much good,
and I would deny hearing the question in order to evade a profitless
statement of views in that vacuum, and then we would cast about in
our minds for some other topic of equal interest. . . .

On this occasion Altiora was absent, and to qualify our Young