"Don't hurry for us," he said, glancing round at the litter of the room, "we have all the illustrated papers." Rupert lurched thoughtfully out of the room, and I followed him even more slowly; in fact, I lingered long enough to hear, as I passed through the room, the passages and the kitchen stairs, Basil's voice continuing conversationally: "And now, Mr Burrows," he said, settling himself sociably in the chair, "there's no reason why we shouldn't go on with that amusing argument.
I'm sorry that you have to express yourself lying on your back on the floor, and, as I told you before, I've no more notion why you are there than the man in the moon.

A conversationalist like yourself, however, can scarcely be seriously handicapped by any bodily posture.

You were saying, if I remember right, when this incidental fracas occurred, that the rudiments of science might with advantage be made public." "Precisely," said the large man on the floor in an easy tone.

"I hold that nothing more than a rough sketch of the universe as seen by science can be..." And here the voices died away as we descended into the basement.

I noticed that Mr Greenwood did not join in the amicable controversy.
Strange as it may appear, I think he looked back upon our proceedings with a slight degree of resentment.