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?"
"In the Bible. Do you know to whom it was addressed?"
"To Judas Iscariot." (Smash went the egg!)
Sabre said feebly--he _could_ not handle his arguments--"Well, anyway, 'always with us'--there you are. If you're going to create a place where life is going to be lived as it should be lived, I don't see how you're going to shut the poor out of it. Aren't they a part of life? They've got as much right to get away from mean streets and ugly surroundings as we have--and a jolly sight more need. Always with us. It doesn't matter tuppence whom it was said to."
"It happens," pronounced Mr. Boom Bagshaw, "to matter a great deal more than tuppence. It happens to knock the bottom clean out of your argument. It was addressed to the Iscariot because the Iscariot was trying to do just what you are trying to do. He was trying to make duty to the poor an excuse for grudging service to Christ. Now, listen, Sabre. If people thought a little less about their duty towards the poor and a little more about their duty towards themselves, they would be in a great deal fitter state to help their fellow creatures, poor or rich. That is what the Garden Home is to do for those who live in it, and that is what the Garden Home is _going_ to do."
He stabbed sharply with the butt of a dessert knife on the dessert plate which had just been placed before him. The plate split neatly into two exact halves. He gazed at them sulkily, put them aside, drew another plate before him, and remarked to Mabel:
"You know we are moving into the vicarage to-morrow? We are giving an At Home to-morrow week. You will come."
The plural pronoun included his mother. He was intensely celibate.