Lord Potter passed on with his nose in the air, but when he had gone another two or three steps, turned round and said to Mr. Perry: "You have had a lucky escape, sir. Your method of life is bringing you down pretty low, and if you are wise you will give up all this nonsense, and return to the quite respectable class in which you were born."
Then he turned to me. "As for you, young man," he said, "I shall make it my business to know more about you. I don't believe you are what you pretend to be."
As he walked away with his dirty head in the air, Mr. Perry spluttered indignantly: "The _respectable_ class in which I was born! He knows very well that I am of a good family--as good as his own. Really, the arrogance of the dirty set is getting past all bearing!"
"He makes you feel as if your clothes fitted you," said young Perry. "But never mind him, father. He can't touch us."
[1] A Daylight Saving Bill had been passed some years before, by which an hour was borrowed in April to be paid back in October. The necessity, however, of getting up an hour earlier than usual had made the whole populace so cross that the Government which had passed the Bill was forced to resign, and the next Government repealed the law immediately upon coming into office. They omitted, however, to allow for the repayment of the borrowed hour, and as no Government had since cared to touch the question, Upsidonian time had remained an hour earlier ever since.
[2] It was held in Upsidonia that private knowledge of any fact was the possessor's own property, and, as no one was willing to acquire property if they could help it, questions of this sort were never pressed. It had even been laid down in the courts that a person too ready with information could be indicted for forcing property on his hearers. Vide Cope on "The Bore in Law."
[3] I might also have been arrested for sleeping out with visible means of substance, which had been in Mr. Perry's mind when he had imperilled himself by his kindly action, as he told me afterwards.
We saw Mr. Perry into his tram, and started to walk through the town.
My observation as to the behaviour and appearance of the well-dressed people was confirmed. The men slouched along with their hands in their pockets, and the women, although they wore fine clothes, had a very ungraceful bearing. The most expensively dressed were the worst in this respect, and the poorer sort of people hustled them off the pavements and treated them with every mark of contempt.