"Catherine, that is the first time you have ever disappointed me," he said. "I thought you would always rather go somewhere and do something than sit down and be comfortable. I thought you never even wanted to be unemployed."
"I don't really," said she. "I only think I do."
"But, anyhow, you prefer to have lunch than go to St Ursula's."
"Ah, you don't understand! I have got to be at the Industrial Sale at three, in order to open it myself, and I literally haven't enough minutes to get down to St Ursula's, and stand and grin, and get back to Portland Place by three. It couldn't happen. My anxiety was that the quarter-past two engagement might leave me time, if I had no lunch, to get to Portland Place at three. It won't. Hurrah!"
Lady Thurso poured herself out a glass of very hot water from a blanketed jug that stood at her elbow, and drank it in rapid sips. She never took alcohol in any form, except on those rare occasions when she was really dead beat, and had to do something energetic the next moment. But since every fad appealed to her, she, Athenian-wise, in her desire for some new thing, tried them all. She had just abandoned, in fact, the plan of drinking nothing whatever at meals, but sipping distilled water at eleven in the morning and half-past three in the afternoon. It seemed to suit her quite well, but as she was, and had always been, in perfect health already, there was nothing particular to be gained by it, whereas for other reasons the _régime_ was inconvenient, since at those hours when she ought to be sipping distilled water she was usually very busy, and either forgot, or, as at a bazaar, was so placed that distilled water was practically unattainable. So, just for the moment, she drank hot water at meals, and found it suited her as well as everything else.
"Good gracious, what nonsense people talk," she said, "when they speak of the idle and luxurious upper classes! Look at us all. From the King downwards, we are worked to death for the sake of the classes who revile us. I stopped in the Park the other day to listen to one of those unwashed orators of the Marble Arch. He read out from a grimy newspaper that the King had been shooting somewhere, and was to return next day 'in a motor-car,' said the speaker, with unspeakable irony, and there were groans. Oh, how I longed to speak, too--but I hadn't time--and remind them that he did a far longer day's work than any two of them put together, and would come up in a motor-car because otherwise he couldn't open the new wing of the Ophthalmic Hospital next morning. But that is just the weak point about Socialism. I am a Socialist until I hear them talk. Good gracious, how I should welcome an Eight-Hours Bill! It would be a holiday! Eight hours! Lazy brutes!"