It was about a week after I had been welcomed into the Perry family that we were all asked to take high tea at the house of Mrs. Perry's sister, the Countess of Blueberry.

The most important thing that had happened in the meantime was that I had fallen deeply in love with Miriam. We had been much together, and our conversations had largely concerned themselves with the curious state of things obtaining in the country from which I had come. Miriam was deeply interested in what I told her, but I had to be very careful. In some respects she became more and more inclined to approve of a country in which wealth might be used to lessen care, instead of increasing it, and in which even the richest were under no cloud of inferiority. The pictures I painted of English life under conditions of monetary ease appealed alike to her natural tastes, of which in Upsidonia she had to be ashamed, if she were to show right feeling, and to the philanthropic ideals in which she had been brought up. She could never get it out of her mind that we showed great nobility of behaviour in treating rich people with a total absence of contempt, and I did not desire that she should, although I insisted upon the fact itself.

But every now and again I came up against a painful shrinking. I had to be extraordinarily careful how I dealt with the subject of food, for instance, and I think that if I had ever described to her a city banquet, or even a college feast, I should have wiped out at a stroke all the admiration she was inclined to show for the habits and customs of my beloved country.

But short as had been the time since I had come to Magnolia Hall, I had already adapted myself somewhat to the Upsidonian point of view—indeed, a good deal more than I should have thought possible.

In the matter of food and drink, I was now inclined to despise the delicate living that I had at first taken such pleasure in. I can only say on my own behalf—if I have seemed to represent myself as greedier than I will confess to being—that I had been living a hard active life for some weeks past, and was in the most abounding physical health; also that Mrs. Lemon, the Perrys' cook, was a supreme artist.[26] After all, my usual life was necessarily abstemious, and it had happened to me before to get very tired of luxurious living, when I had been staying with friends accustomed to it, and to go back to my own moderate habits with relief.

So I now ate and drank sparingly at Magnolia Hall, and was inclined to feel the same disgust towards those who did neither as was commonly expressed around me. And it did not any longer seem curious to me that contempt for luxury should be a general and genuine feeling in Upsidonia. It was encouraged by constant expression, and those who might be temperamentally inclined towards what is called "doing themselves well," were ashamed of indulging their inclinations out of respect for public opinion.[27]

In the matter of clothes I had also somewhat changed my point of view. It is gratifying to feel one's self well-dressed, if everyone is well-dressed around one; but if one is not suitably dressed as well, the gratification disappears. It was not long before I began to feel, walking about the streets of Culbut, in the excellent clothes for which I still owed money to the Universal Stores, that I was not in the fashion. It was rather as if I had turned out to shoot, amongst a crowd of men in tweeds and woollens, wearing a shiny silk hat, varnished boots, and striped trousers with creases down them. I discovered that it was only in the most exclusive set, of which Lord Potter was one of the leaders, that it was the fashion to go ragged and dirty. The ordinary members of the educated classes were as clean as we are. But they liked old clothes, and didn't want to be bothered with large collections of them, or of anything else. Those who spent the day in bodily toil always changed in the evening, wearing the newer of their two suits, which took the place of the other one when that was entirely worn out.

The mention of Lord Potter reminds me of an encounter I had with that nobleman a few days after I had hoped I had seen the last of him, in the police court.

I was walking along the road from Culbut to Magnolia Hall, and had reached the point at which the villas were beginning to get larger and to stand in gardens of some extent, when I saw a filthy-looking tramp crossing the road from one gate to the other, and recognised him as I passed as Lord Potter.

He did not look at me, but when I had gone on a few yards, he called out: "Hi, you fellow!" in an authoritative voice.

I took no notice, and he called out again more loudly, so I turned round to see what he wanted.

"Didn't you hear me call?" he asked angrily. "Which is Hoggenschlick's house?"

"I don't know," I said.

"Well, just run in and ask if Hoggenschlick lives here, and tell him that Lord Potter wants to see him. I think this is the house. If it isn't, it is the one across the road."

"Don't you think you might find out which it is for yourself?" I asked. "I'm not your servant."

His face changed as he recognised me. "Oh, it's you!" he exclaimed disagreeably; "and dressed like the cad I knew you were when I first saw you. If you give me any of your impudence you'll find yourself in trouble again, and I'll take care you don't get off this time. I shall keep my eye on you. Where are you living?"

"Where I can get a wash sometimes," I replied. "You don't seem to be so fortunate."

Then I turned round and walked on, leaving him very angry.

But to return to Miriam. England, and English life, was a little secret between us; I did not talk about them to anybody else, and asked her not to do so. The fact that she entered willingly into this understanding, which I found so agreeable, being in that state of mind in which any understanding with her would have pleased me, was very gratifying, as tending to show that she had something of the same feeling about it as I had. Oh, we were getting on very well! But she had not yet invited me into her garden.