“Beyond a doubt,” agreed Dyce.  “Lady Ogram deserves well of her country.”

“There’s just one way,” remarked Mrs. Gallantry, “in which, it seems to me, she could have deserved better.  Don’t be angry with me, Lady Ogram; you know I profit by your example in saying just what I think.  Now, if, instead of a mill, you had built a training institution for domestic service—­”

“Bah!” broke in the hostess.  “How you harp on that idea!  Haven’t you any other?”

“One or two more, I assure you,” replied Mrs. Gallantry, with the utmost good-humour.  “But I particularly want to interest you in this one.  It’s better that girls should work in a mill in the country than go to swell the population of slums; I grant you that.  But how much better still for them to work in private houses, following their natural calling, busy with the duties of domestic life.  They’re getting to hate that as much as their menfolk hate agricultural labour; and what could be a worse symptom or a greater danger?”

“Pray,” cried Lady Ogram, in her grating voice, “how would a servants’ school have helped the village?”

“Not so quickly, perhaps, but in time.  With your means and influence, Lady Ogram, you might have started an institution which would be the model of its kind for all England.  Every female child 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 secure initiative to those who are born for rule.  Anything which serves to impress