'Mrs Beste Chetwynde's cooking and Mrs Beste-Chetwynde's garden

'Mrs Beste Chetwynde's cooking and Mrs Beste-Chetwynde's garden,' said Sir Humphrey meditatively. 'What could be desired more except our fair hostess herself? Have you known her long?'
'Only a few weeks,' said Paul.
'There's no one like her,' said Sir Humphrey. He drew a deep breath of smoke. Beyond the yew hedges the panotrope could be faintly heard. 'What did she want to build this house for?' he asked. 'It all comes of this set she's got into. It's not doing her any good. Damned awkward position to be in a rich woman without a husband! Bound to get herself talked about. What Margot ought to do is to marry - someone who would stabilize her position, someone,' said Sir Humphrey, 'with a position in public life.'
And then, without any apparent connexion of thought, he began talking about himself. ' "Aim high" has been my motto,' said Sir Humphrey, 'all through my life. You probably won't get what you want, but you may get something; aim low, and you get nothing at all. It's like throwing a stone at a cat. When I was a kid that used to be great sport in our yard; I daresay you were throwing cricket balls when you were that age, but it's the same thing. If you throw straight at it, you fall short; aim above, and with luck you score. Every kid knows that. I'll tell you the story of my life.'
Why was it, Paul wondered, that everyone he met seemed to specialize in this form of autobiography? He supposed he must have a sympathetic air. Sir Humphrey told of his early life: of a family of nine living in two rooms, of a father who drank and a mother who had fits, of a sister who went on the streets, of a brother who went to prison, of another brother who was born a deaf mute. He told of scholarships and polytechnics, of rebuffs and encouragements, of a University career of brilliant success and unexampled privations.
'I used to do proof reading for the Holywell Press,' he said, 'then I learned shorthand and took down the University sermons for the local papers.'
As he spoke the clipped yews seemed to grow grey with the soot of the slums, and the panotrope in the distance took on the gay regularity of a barrel organ heard up a tenement staircase.
'We were a pretty hot lot at Scone in my time,' he said, naming several high officers of state with easy familiarity, 'but none of them had so far to go as I had.'
Paul listened patiently, as was his habit. Sir Humphrey's words flowed easily, because, as a matter of fact, he was rehearsing a series of articles he had dictated the evening before for publication in a Sunday newspaper. He told Paul about his first briefs and his first general election, the historic Liberal campaign of 1906, and of the strenuous days just before the formation of the Coalition.
'I've nothing to be ashamed of,' said Sir Humphrey. 'I've gone farther than most people. I suppose that, if I keep on, I may one day lead the party. But all this winter I've been feeling that I've got as far as I shall ever get. I've got to the time when I should like to go into the other House and give up work and perhaps keep a racehorse or two' and his eyes took on the far away look of a popular actress describing the cottage of her dreams 'and a yacht and a villa at Monte. The others can do that when they like, and they know it. It's not till you get to my age that you really feel the disadvantage of having been born poor.'