Mr. Tovey, though naturally he would have been justifiably annoyed at such a suggestion, had an incurably romantic core to his plodding and material mind. Of course, in common with most of his class, he firmly believed that human happiness varied exactly with the social scale. “As happy as a king” was to him no mere catchword. He was convinced⁠—and, to do him justice, he drew considerable satisfaction from the conviction⁠—that the members of the Royal Family were the happiest persons in the land, and that this happiness descended in regular gradation through the ranks of the nobility and gentlefolk until it reached acute misery somewhere in the lower strata of those who dwelt in slums. From this outlook on life it necessarily followed that the more he could enable Ivy to better herself, the happier she must ultimately be.