s happening. This Garden Home is going to enshrine life
as it should be lived. More. It is going to make life be lived as it
should he lived. Some one said to me the other day--the Duchess of
Wearmouth; I was staying at Wearmouth Castle--that the Garden Home is
going to be a sanctuary. I said 'Bah!' like that--'Bah!' I said, 'Every
town, every city, every village is a sanctuary; and asleep in its
sanctuary; and dead to life in its sanctuary; and dead to Christ in its
sanctuary.' I said, 'The Garden Home is not going to be a sanctuary, nor
yet a sepulchre, nor yet a tomb. It is going to be a symbol, a signal, a
shout.' More ham."

He paused, pushed his plate to one side more as if it had bitten him
than as if he desired more ham to be placed upon it, and looked around
the room before him, sulkily, and exercising his chin.

Sabre had a vision of dense crowds of bishops in lawn sleeves, duchesses
in Gainsborough hats, and herds of intensely fashionable rank and file
applauding vigorously. He could almost hear the applause. But how to
deal with this man he never knew. He always felt he was about fourteen
when Mr. Boom Bagshaw thus addressed him. He therefore said, "Great!"
and Mabel murmured, "How splendid!"

VIII

But Sabre's thought was--and it remained with him throughout the meal,
acutely illustrated by the impressive monologues which Mr. Boom Bagshaw
addressed to Mabel, and by her radiant responses--his thought was, "I
simply can't get on with this chap--or with any of Mabel's crowd. They
all make me feel like a kid. I can't answer them when they talk. They
say things I've got ideas about but I never can explain my ideas to
them. I never can argue my ideas with them. They've all got convictions
and I believe I haven't any convictions. I've only got instincts and
these convictions come down on instincts like a hammer on an egg."

Mr. Boom Bagshaw was saying, "And we shall have no poor in the Garden
Home. No ugly streets. No mean surroundings. Uplift. Everywhere uplift."

There slipped out of Sabre aloud, "There you are. That's the kind of
thing."

Mr. Boom Bagshaw, as if to disclose without fear precisely where he was,
dismantled from between them the hedge of flowers which he had replaced
and looked sulkily across. "What kind of thing?"

Sabre had a vision of himself advancing an egg for Mr. Bagshaw's hammer.
"About having no poor in the Garden Home. Isn't there something about
the poor being always with us?