in Shawe would have had a prospect before her, and the village would
have attracted decent poor families, who might somehow have been
helped to support themselves--"

Lady Ogram waved her hand contemptuously.

"Somehow! That's the way with your conservative-reform women.
Somehow! Always vague, rambling notions--"

Conservative-reform!" exclaimed Mrs. Gallantry, showing a little
pique, though her face was pleasant as ever. "Surely your own ideas
are to a great extent conservative."

"Yes, but there's a liberal supply of common sense in them!" cried
the hostess, so delighted to have made a joke that she broke into
cackling laughter, and laughed until failure of breath made her gasp
and wriggle in her chair, an alarming spectacle. To divert
attention, Constance began talking about the mill, describing the
good effect it had wrought in certain families. Dyce listened with
an air almost as engrossed as that of Mr. Gallantry, and, when his
moment came, took up the conversation.

"Mrs. Gallantry's suggestion," he said, "is admirable, and the
sooner it's carried out, not merely in one place, but all over
England, the better. But I rather think that, in the given
circumstances, Lady Ogram took the wisest possible step. We have to
look at these questions from the scientific point of view. Our
civilisation is concerned, before all things, with the organisation
of a directing power; the supreme problem of science, and at the
same time the most urgent practical question of the day, is how to