ll me, with quaint
impersonality, a number of instances of how people had been funny in
connection with jobs he had not been given.

"You see," he ended, "the country's in such a state--capital going out of
it every day. Enterprise being killed all over the place. There's
practically nothing to be had!"

"Ah!" I said, "you think it's worse, then, than it used to be?"

He smiled; in that smile there was a shade of patronage.

"We're going down-hill as fast as ever we can. National character's
losing all its backbone. No wonder, with all this molly-coddling going
on!"

"Oh!" I murmured, "molly-coddling? Isn't that excessive?"

"Well! Look at the way everything's being done for them! The working
classes are losing their self-respect as fast as ever they can. Their
independence is gone already!"

"You think?"

"Sure of it! I'll give you an instance----" and he went on to describe
to me the degeneracy of certain working men employed by his aunt and his
eldest brother Claud and his youngest brother Alan.

"They don't do a stroke more than they're obliged," he ended; "they know
jolly well they've got their Unions, and their pensions, and this
Insurance, to fall back on."

It was evidently a subject on which he felt strongly.

"Yes," he muttered, "the nation is being rotted down."

And a faint thrill of surprise passed through me. For the affairs of the
nation moved him so much more strongly than his own. His voice already
had a different ring, his eyes a different look. He eagerly leaned
forward, and his long, straight backbone looked longer and straighter
than ever. He was less the ghost of a man. A faint flush even had come
into his pale cheeks, and he moved his well-kept hands emphatically.

"Oh, yes!" he said: "The country is going to the dogs, right enough; but
you can't get them to see it. They go on sapping and sapping the
independence of the people. If the working man's to be looked after,
whatever he does--what on earth's to become of his go, and foresight, and
perseverance?"

In his rising voice a certain piquancy was left to its accent of the
ruling class by that faint twang, which came, I remembered, from some
slight defect in his tonsils.

"Mark my words! So long as we're on these lines, we shall do nothing.
It's going against evolution. They say Darwin's getting old-fashioned;
all I know is, he's good enough for me. Competition is the only thing."

"But competition," I said,