 assurance on
one point - Socialism involved Atheism.
    Then it came to pass that someone saw Mutimer approach the Walthams' house
just before dinner time; saw him, moreover, ring and enter. A couple of hours,
and the ominous event was everywhere being discussed. Well, well, it was not
difficult to see what that meant. Trust Mrs. Waltham for shrewd generalship.
Adela Waltham had been formerly talked of in connection with young Eldon; but
Eldon was now out of the question, and behold his successor, in a double sense!
Mrs. Mewling surrendered her Sunday afternoon nap and flew from house to house -
of course in time for the dessert wine at each. Her cry was haro! Really, this
was sharp practice on Mrs. Waltham's part; it was stealing a march before the
commencement of the game. Did there not exist a tacit understanding that
movements were postponed until Mutimer's occupation of the Manor? Adela was a
very nice young girl, to be sure, a very nice girl indeed, but one must confess
that she had her eyes open. Would it not be well for united Wanley to let her
know its opinion of such doings?
    In the meantime Richard was enjoying himself, with as little thought of the
Wanley gossips as of - shall we say, the old curtained pew in Wanley Church? He
was perfectly aware that the Walthams did not represent the highest gentility,
that there was a considerable interval, for example, between Mrs. Waltham and
Mrs. Westlake; but the fact remained that he had never yet been on intimate
terms with a family so refined. Radical revolutionist though he was, he had none
of the grossness or obstinacy which would have denied to the bourgeois household
any advantage over those of his own class. At dinner he found himself behaving
circumspectly. He knew already that the cultivated taste objects to the use of a
table-knife save for purposes of cutting; on the whole he saw grounds for the
objection. He knew, moreover, that manducation and the absorption of fluids must
be performed without audible gusto; the knowledge cost him some self-criticism.
But there were numerous minor points of convention on which he was not so clear;
it had never occurred to him, for instance, that civilisation demands the
breaking of bread, that, in the absence of silver, a fork must suffice for the
dissection of fish, that a napkin is a graceful auxiliary in the process of a
meal and not rather an embarrassing superfluity of furtive application. Like a
wise man, he did not talk much during dinner, devoting
