If Arthur Berkeley lunched by himself upon a solitary commons of
cold beef, he certainly did not treat his friends and guests in
corresponding fashion. His little entertainment was of the daintiest
and airiest character, so airy that, as Edie herself observed
afterwards to Harry, it took away all the sense of meat and drink
altogether, and left one only a pleased consciousness of full
artistic gratification. Even Ernest, though he had his scruples
about the aspic jelly, might eat the famous Magdalen chicken cutlets,
his brother said, 'with a distinct feeling of exalted gratitude to
the arduous culinary evolution of collective humanity.'

'Consider,' said Herbert, balancing neatly a little pyramid of
whip cream and apricot jam upon his fork, 'consider what ages of
slow endeavour must have gone to the development of such a complex
mixture as this, Ernest, and thank your stars that you were born
in this nineteenth century of Soyer and Francatelli, instead of
being condemned to devour a Homeric feast with the unsophisticated
aid of your own five fingers.'

'But do tell me, Mr. Le Breton,' asked Edie, with one of her pretty
smiles, 'what will this socialist republic of yours be like when
it actually comes about? I'm dying to know all about it.'

'Really, Miss Oswald,' Ernest answered, in a half-embarrassed tone,
'I don't quite know how to reply to such a very wide and indefinite
question. I haven't got any cut-and-dried constitutional scheme of
my own for reorganising the whole system of society, any distinct
panacea to cure all the ills that collective flesh is heir to. I
leave the details of the future order to your brother Harry. The
thing that troubles me is not so much how to reform the world at