Barratt, a kind and sensible heart.

‘Well,’ said Miss Steele, ‘there’s a lot to be said on both sides, really, isn’t there, Mr. Thwaites?’

‘What?’ said Mr. Thwaites, and was so surprised by this second attack from outside that for the moment he could say nothing. Then he added: ‘Oh yes, there is. On all sides.’

‘After all,’ said Miss Steele, ‘it’s the younger generation that’s got to decide, isn’t it? It always was that way, and it always will be, won’t it?’

Thus, with a clever mixture of the spirit of modernity and the wisdom of history, Miss Steele brought down two birds with one stone, and Mr. Thwaites was practically knocked out.

‘Ah well, we shall see,’ was all he could manage.

But Miss Roach again guessed that he had not done yet, and she was again right.

All at once she saw his eyes shoot over to the other side of the room in the direction of the two American Lieutenants, who had so far been too shy to speak a word, even to each other.

‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘what our Friends across the Water think about it all. What?’

And he fixed them with a horrible sort of ogling and encouraging eye.

This was too hideous – Miss Roach felt she would rather be attacked herself. Not content with disgracing the Rosamund Tea Rooms, he was now going to disgrace his country as well.

‘I wonder,’ said Mr. Thwaites, having had no answer, ‘what our Democratic friends from across the Atlantic think about it all – our redoubtable friends from across the Pond – the Lil Ole Pond – eh?’

There was yet another ghastly pause – the ghastliest yet. Always, with Mr. Thwaites, the pauses got ghastlier and ghastlier. Then one of the Americans, the bigger of the two, could just be heard murmuring that he reckoned he agreed with the lady, there was a whole lot to be said both ways . . .

‘What?’ said Mr. Thwaites, who had not heard what was said. But the big American would not repeat himself.

‘The Whale of a Problem,’ said Mr. Thwaites, considerately assuming what he assumed to be the idiom of those to whom he was addressing himself. ‘What?’

But the American still would not speak, and at this point things were made easier by Sheila beginning to remove the empty plates of spam and mashed potatoes, and replacing them with plates of steamed pudding and custard.

He will certainly, in a moment, say ‘Say, Bo’ or ‘Waal, Bo’, thought Miss Roach, for he hardly ever failed to do this when imitating American speech, or talking about Americans. But this time he did not do exactly what she feared. Instead, he paused a long while, and then came out with something which even she could not have foreseen.

‘The Almighty Dollar,’ said Mr. Thwaites, weightily, out of the blue, and in a measured tone . . . That, and nothing else.

It was not easy to see exactly what Mr. Thwaites intended to establish by this – not easy, that is to say, for one who was not acquainted with the workings of his wild and circuitous mentality. To one so acquainted, however, his meaning was fairly clear. He meant Americans in general. He had been put into the presence of Americans: it therefore seemed to him his business, as master and spokesman of the boarding-house, to sum up and characterise America, and in this way he summed it up and characterised it.

And here it seemed that he was conscious of having found perfect expression for the perfect thought, for he said no more.

And because Mr. Thwaites said no more, the atmosphere in which pins could be heard dropping returned to the room, and no one else dared to say any more. Ruminatively, dully, around the heavy thoughts set in motion by Mr.