"Peace of body," said Birkin.
"Well, as you like there," replied Gerald. "But how are you going to decide this for a nation?"
"Heaven preserve me," laughed Birkin.
"Yes, but suppose you have to?" Gerald persisted.
"Then it is the same. If the national crown-piece is an old hat, then the thieving gent may have it."
"But can the national or racial hat be an old hat?" insisted Gerald.
"Pretty well bound to be, I believe," said Birkin.
"I'm not so sure," said Gerald.
"I don't agree, Rupert," said Hermione.
"All right," said Birkin.
"I'm all for the old national hat," laughed Gerald.
"And a fool you look in it," cried Diana, his pert sister who was just in her teens.
"Oh, we're quite out of our depths with these old hats," cried Laura Crich. "Dry up now, Gerald. We're going to drink toasts. Let us drink toasts. Toasts — glasses, glasses, — now then, toasts! Speech! Speech!"
Birkin, thinking about race or national death, watched his glass being filled with champagne. The bubbles broke at the rim, the man withdrew, and feeling a sudden thirst at the sight of the fresh wine, Birkin drank up his glass. A queer little tension in the room roused him. He felt a sharp constraint.
"Did I do it by accident, or on purpose?" he asked himself. And he decided that, according to the vulgar phrase, he had done it "accidentally on purpose." He looked round at the hired footman. And the hired footman came, with a silent step of cold servant-like disapprobation. Birkin decided that he detested toasts, and footmen, and assemblies, and mankind altogether, in most of its aspects. Then he rose to make a speech. But he was somehow disgusted.
At length it was over, the meal. Several men strolled out into the garden. There was a lawn, and flower-beds, and at the boundary an iron fence shutting off the little field or park. The view was pleasant; a highroad curving round the edge of a low lake, under the trees. In the spring air, the
