l of us, from princesses and
prime-ministers' wives downward, talk of topics that would have been
considered quite gravely improper in the nineteenth century.
Nevertheless, some topics have, if anything, become more indelicate than
they were, and this is especially true of the discussion of income, of
any discussion that tends, however remotely, to inquire, Who is it at
the base of everything who really pays in blood and muscle and
involuntary submissions for _your_ freedom and magnificence? This,
indeed, is almost the ultimate surviving indecency. So that it was with
considerable private shame and discomfort that Lady Harman pursued even
in her privacy the train of thought that Susan Burnet had set going. It
had been conveyed into her mind long ago, and it had settled down there
and grown into a sort of security, that the International Bread and Cake
Stores were a very important contribution to Progress, and that Sir
Isaac, outside the gates of his home, was a very useful and beneficial
personage, and richly meriting a baronetcy. She hadn't particularly
analyzed this persuasion, but she supposed him engaged in a kind of
daily repetition, but upon modern scientific lines, of the miracle of
the loaves and fishes, feeding a great multitude that would otherwise
have gone hungry. She knew, too, from the advertisements that flowered
about her path through life, that this bread in question was
exceptionally clean and hygienic; whole front pages of the _Daily
Messenger_, headed the "Fauna of Small Bakehouses," and adorned with a
bordering of _Blatta orientalis_, the common cockroach, had taught her
that, and she knew that Sir Isaac's passion for purity had also led to
the _Old Country Gazette's_ spirited and successful campaign for a
non-party measure securing additional bakehouse regulation and
inspection. And her impression had been that the growing and developing
refreshment side of the concern was almost a public charity; Sir Isaac
gave, he said, a larger, heavier scone, a bigger pat of butter, a more
elegant teapot, ham more finely cut and less questionable pork-pies
than any other system of syndicated tea-shops. She supposed that
whenever he sat late at night going over schemes and papers, or when he
went off for days together to Cardiff or Glasgow or Dublin, or such-like
centres, or when he became preoccupied at dinner and whistled
thoughtfully through his teeth, he was planning to increase the amount
or diminish the cos