in an unimportant way, raising silly little clouds of dust which
will settle down again at once. She's keeping the world going and she
probably doesn't even know the name of the Prime Minister."

"That's all very well," said Gorman, "but we're seeing that these people
get their rights, their fair share of what's going. If it wasn't for us
and the laws we pass, the rich would grow richer and richer while these
men and women would gradually sink into the position of slaves. I'm not
a socialist. I don't believe in that theory; but capitalists have had
things far too much their own way in the past."

"Ascher!"

"Oh, Ascher! I like Ascher, of course, personally; but speaking of him
as a typical member of a class, he's simply a parasite. All financiers
are. He ought to be abolished, wiped out, done away with. He fulfils no
useful function."

Our motor sped along. A cycle with a side car just kept pace with us for
a while. A nice, clean-shaven, honest-looking young fellow was in the
saddle. His girl-wife sat beside him in the basket-work slipper which
he dragged along. It was her baby which I had pointed out to Gorman a
moment before.

"Perhaps," I said, "they have had tinned peaches for tea."

"Very likely," said Gorman, "just the sort of thing they would have. I
know that class. Lived among them for years. He comes home at half past
six. She has put on a clean blouse and tidied her hair so that he'll
kiss her, and he does. Then he kisses the baby, probably likes doing
that, too, as it's the first. Then he has a wash and she brings in the
tea. Bread and butter for her with a pot of marmalade, an egg--at this
time of year certainly an egg--for him."

"And tinned peaches."

"Eaten with teaspoons out of saucers," said Gorman, "and they'll enjoy
them far more than you did that lobster salad at Scott's."

"I'm sure they will. And that is just where Ascher comes in."

"I don't see it," said Gorman, "unless you mean that they'd be eating
hothouse peaches if there were no Aschers."

I did not mean that. I am, indeed, pretty sure that if there were no
Aschers, if Gorman succeeded in abolishing the class, neither the
city clerk, nor his pretty wife, nor any one else in England would eat
hothouse peaches. There would not be any. I am inclined to think that if
Ascher were done away with there would not even be any tinned peaches.
Tinned peaches come from California. Somebody grows them there. That man
must be kept going, fe