Barthwick. [Uneasily.] I’m not sure they were wise——­

Mrs. Barthwick.  My dear John, what are you talking about?  How could there be any alternative?  Think of the effect on the other servants!

Barthwick.  Of course in principle—­I wasn’t thinking of that.

Jack. [Maliciously.] Crackers, please, Dad.

     [Barthwick is compelled to pass the crackers.]

Mrs. Barthwick.  Lady Holyrood told me:  “I had her up,” she said; “I said to her, ’You’ll leave my house at once; I think your conduct disgraceful.  I can’t tell, I don’t know, and I don’t wish to know, what you were doing.  I send you away on principle; you need not come to me for a character.’  And the girl said:  ’If you don’t give me my notice, my lady, I want a month’s wages.  I’m perfectly respectable.  I’ve done nothing.’"’—­Done nothing!

Barthwick.  H’m!

Mrs. Barthwick.  Servants have too much license.  They hang together so terribly you never can tell what they’re really thinking; it’s as if they were all in a conspiracy to keep you in the dark.  Even with Marlow, you feel that he never lets you know what’s really in his mind.  I hate that secretiveness; it destroys all confidence.  I feel sometimes I should like to shake him.

Jack.  Marlow’s a most decent chap.  It’s simply beastly every one knowing your affairs.

Barthwick.  The less you say about that the better!

Mrs. Barthwick.  It goes all through the lower classes.  You can not tell when they are speaking the truth.  To-day when I was shopping after leaving the Holyroods, one of these unemployed came up and spoke to me.  I suppose I only had twenty yards or so to walk to the carnage, but he seemed to spring up in the street.

Barthwick.  Ah!  You must be very careful whom you speak to in these days.

Mrs. Barthwick.  I did n’t answer him, of course.  But I could see at once that he wasn’t telling the truth.

Barthwick. [Cracking a nut.] There’s one very good rule—­look at their eyes.

Jack.  Crackers, please, Dad.

Barthwick. [Passing the crackers.] If their eyes are straight-forward I sometimes give them sixpence.  It ’s against my principles, but it’s most difficult to refuse.  If you see that they’re desperate, and dull, and shifty-looking, as so many of them are, it’s certain to mean drink, or crime, or something unsatisfactory.

Mrs. Barthwick.  This man had dreadful eyes.  He looked as if he could commit a murder.  “I ’ve ’ad nothing to eat to-day,” he said.  Just like that.

Barthwick.  What was William about?  He ought to have been waiting.

Jack. [Raising his wine-glass to his nose.] Is this the ’63, Dad?