Upstairs, Carson, in that even-more-imperious-than-usual voice he uses when he's puzzled, asks if he's to answer to both Matthew and Lord Grantham, but Matthew's like, no, no of course not! Predictably enough, though, when Carson brings up the issue of replenishing his staff, Matthew wonders if he really needs a second footman, noting that the world is a bit different than it was before the war. Carson's like, sure, you're absolutely right, I was an actual butler back then, but now I'm a butler disguised as a second footman, which is exactly how I imagined my life going! Lord Grantham steps in and says that's not what Matthew meant, which is good, because at the rate Carson was going Matthew would thrown Mary over so he could run out and marry another fragile heiress whose money he could put into the Downton staff budget. Lord Grantham then mentions an imminent dinner for the Archbishop of York for which they won't have time to get the new staff hired. Carson tells him it'll be fine, no doubt thinking it's not his ass that will be damned if something goes wrong.

The next morning, Matthew asks Edith why she doesn't have breakfast in bed, now that... she finishes for him: "Now that both of the others are [married], what difference would it make?" If he finds that a smart line of inquiry to a woman recently jilted, I can only conclude he hasn't had coffee yet. To be fair, Edith's response was in reasonable humor, and after she explains that she likes to be up and about, Lord Grantham, reading the paper, tells them that Tennessee is about to ratify the 19th Amendment giving all women the right to vote. (It's the state that produced the three-quarters majority necessary to do so; if the show were following history accurately, this would put us in August 1920, but that would require Sybil to have been pregnant for like a year.) Edith remarks that this will put American women ahead of them; it's only British women both over 30 and "householders" that are currently represented. Matthew suggests she write to the Times, and she agrees that she might before Lord Grantham orders her to ask Cora if she needs help with that night's dinner. Well, he's not explicitly saying he likes his women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, but you'll at least grant the comment was a bit ill-timed. Lord Grantham goes on that "there's nothing so toffee-nosed as a prince of the church," and if he feels that way, I guess his insistence that an archbishop preside over Mary's wedding was political? I do like Lord Grantham on a macro level, but that has little to do with recapping. He wraps up that the Archbishop should be seated next to the Dowager Countess. "She'll know how to handle him." I hope the "how" is "on camera," is all I can say.