We could ha done it easy under fifteen.
TANNER.
By the way, let me introduce you. Mr Octavius Robinson: Mr Enry Straker.
STRAKER.
Pleased to meet you, sir.
Mr Tanner is gittin at you with his Enry Straker, you know. You call it Henery.
But I don't mind, bless you.
TANNER.
You think it's simply bad taste in me to chaff him, Tavy.
But you're wrong.
This man takes more trouble to drop his aiches than ever his father did to pick them up.
It's a mark of caste to him.
I have never met anybody more swollen with the pride of class than Enry is.
STRAKER.
Easy, easy!
A little moderation, Mr Tanner.
TANNER.
A little moderation, Tavy, you observe.
You would tell me to draw it mild, But this chap has been educated.
What's more, he knows that we haven't.
What was that board school of yours, Straker?
STRAKER.
Sherbrooke Road.
TANNER.
Sherbrooke Road!
Would any of us say Rugby! Harrow! Eton! in that tone of intellectual snobbery?
Sherbrooke Road is a place where boys learn something; Eton is a boy farm where we are sent because we are nuisances at home, and because in after life, whenever a Duke is mentioned, we can claim him as an old schoolfellow.
STRAKER.
You don't know nothing about it, Mr. Tanner.
It's not the Board School that does it: it's the Polytechnic.
TANNER.
His university, Octavius.
Not Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Dublin or Glasgow. Not even those Nonconformist holes in Wales.
No, Tavy.
Regent Street, Chelsea, the Borough—I don't know half their confounded names: these are his universities, not mere shops for selling class limitations like ours.
You despise Oxford, Enry, don't you?
STRAKER.
No, I don't.
Very nice sort of place, Oxford, I should think, for people that like that sort of place.
They teach you to be a gentleman there.
In the Polytechnic they teach you to be an engineer or such like.
See?
TANNER.
Sarcasm, Tavy, sarcasm!
Oh, if you could only see into Enry's soul, the depth of his contempt for a gentleman, the arrogance of his pride in being an engineer, would appal you.
He positively likes the car to break down because it brings out my gentlemanly helplessness and his workmanlike skill and resource.
STRAKER.
Never you mind him, Mr Robinson.
He likes to talk.
We know him, don't we?