Picture an afternoon, a low table, a pot of tea and a plate of small cakes, with four or five people sitting round it. Nobody shouts, nobody is in a hurry, and everyone passes things carefully and says thank you. It lasts an hour or two and is over before dinner. That gentle, careful hour is the whole of the word. Children copy it with empty cups, and grown-ups hold it up as the picture of an easy afternoon, so that they can point at a hard job and say it is not this.