“Ah, the French!” sighed Mr. Kennaston; “a people who think depravity the soul of wit!  Their art is mere artfulness.  They care nothing for Nature.”

“No,” Mrs. Haggage assented; “they prefer nastiness. All French books are immoral.  I ran across one the other day that was simply hideously indecent—­unfit for a modest woman to read.  And I can assure you that none of its author’s other books are any better.  I purchased the entire set at once and read them carefully, in order to make sure that I was perfectly justified in warning my working-girls’ classes against them.  I wish to misjudge no man—­not even a member of a nation notoriously devoted to absinthe and illicit relations.”

She breathed heavily, and looked at Mr. Woods as if, somehow, he was responsible.  Then she gave the name of the book to Petheridge Jukesbury.  He wished to have it placed on the Index Expurgatorius of the Brotherhood of Benevolence, he said.

“Dear, dear,” Felix Kennaston sighed, as Mr. Jukesbury made a note of it; “you are all so practical.  You perceive an evil and proceed at once, in your common-sense way, to crush it, to stamp it out.  Now, I can merely lament certain unfortunate tendencies of the age; I am quite unable to contend against them.  Do you know,” Mr. Kenneston continued gaily, as he trifled with a bunch of grapes, “I feel horribly out-of-place among you?  Here is Mrs. Saumarez creating an epidemic of useful and improving knowledge throughout the country, by means of her charming lectures.  Here is Mrs. Haggage, the mainspring, if I may say so, of any number of educational and philanthropic alarm clocks which will some day rouse the sleeping public from its lethargy.  And here is my friend Jukesbury, whose eloquent pleas for a higher life have turned so many workmen from gin and improvidence, and which in a printed form are disseminated even in such remote regions as Africa, where I am told they have produced the most satisfactory results upon the unsophisticated but polygamous monarchs of that continent.  And here, above all, is Miss Hugonin, utilising the vast power of money—­which I am credibly informed is a very good thing to have, though I cannot pretend to speak from experience—­and casting whole bakeryfuls of bread upon the waters of charity.  And here am I, the idle singer of an empty day—­a mere drone in this hive of philanthropic bees!  Dear, dear,” said Mr. Kennaston, enviously, “what a thing it is to be practical!” And he laughed toward Margaret, in his whimsical way.

Miss Hugonin had been strangely silent; but she returned Mr. Kennaston’s smile, and began to take part in the conversation.

“You’re only an ignorant child,” she rebuked him, “and a very naughty child, too, to make fun of us in this fashion.”

“Yes,” Mr. Kennaston assented, “I am wilfully ignorant.  The world adores ignorance; and where ignorance is kissed it is folly to be wise.  To-morrow I shall read you a chapter from my ’Defense of Ignorance,’ which my confiding publisher is going to bring out in the autumn.”