other--then they sat down. Boreham was torn between the
desire to dispute whatever either of his guests put forward, and a still
keener desire to get away rapidly to the drawing-room. Harding had
already lost all interest in the subject of democracy, and was passing
on the claret to Bingham. Bingham helped himself, wondering, as he did
so, whether Mrs. Dashwood was in mourning for a brother, or perhaps had
been mourning for a husband. It seemed to Bingham an interesting
question.

"Good claret this of yours," said Harding. "I conclude that you weren't
one of those fanatics who tried to force us all to become teetotallers.
My view is that at my age a man can judge for himself what is good for
him."

"That wasn't quite the point," said Bingham. "The point was whether the
stay-at-homes should fill up their stomachs, or turn it into cash for
war purposes."

"Of course," sneered Harding, "you like to put it in that way."

"It isn't any man's business," broke in Boreham, "whether another man
can or can't judge what's good for him."

Boreham had been getting up steam for an attack upon Christ Church
because it was ecclesiastical, upon Balliol because it had been
Bingham's college, and upon Oxford in general because he, Boreham, had
not been bred within its walls. In other words, Boreham was going to
speak with unbiassed frankness. But this sudden deviation of the talk to
claret and Harding's cool assumption that his view was like his host's,
could not be passed in silence.

"What I say is," said Harding again, "that when a man gets to my
age----"

"Age isn't the question," interrupted Boreham. "Let every man have his
own view about drink. Mine is that I'm not going to ask your permission
to drink. If a man likes to get drunk, all I say is that it's not my
business. The only thing any of your Bishops ever said that was worth
remembering was: 'I'd rather see England free than England sober.'"

Harding allowed that the saying was a good one. He nodded his head.
Bingham sipped his claret. "You do get a bit free when you're not
sober," he said sweetly. "I say, Harding, so you would rather see Mrs.
Harding free than sober!"

Harding made an inarticulate noise that indicated the place to which in
a future life he would like to consign the speaker.

"Every man does not get offensive when drunk," said Boreham, ignoring,
in the manner peculiar to him, the inner meaning of Bingham's remark.

"That's true," said Bingham. "A