books, with a straw-colored moustache just going gray.

"Sir Gerald Malloring--hope he's not a friend of yours! Divine right of
landowners to lead 'the Land' by the nose! And our friend Britto!"

Nedda, following his eyes, saw a robust, quick-eyed man with a suave
insolence in his dark, clean-shaved face.

"Because at heart he's just a supercilious ruffian, too cold-blooded
to feel, he'll demonstrate that it's no use to feel--waste of valuable
time--ha! valuable!--to act in any direction. And that's a man they
believe things of. And poor Henry Wiltram, with his pathetic: 'Grow our
own food--maximum use of the land as food-producer, and let the rest
take care of itself!' As if we weren't all long past that feeble
individualism; as if in these days of world markets the land didn't
stand or fall in this country as a breeding-ground of health and stamina
and nothing else. Well, well!"

"Aren't they really in earnest, then?" asked Nedda timidly.

"Miss Freeland, this land question is a perfect tragedy. Bar one or two,
they all want to make the omelette without breaking eggs; well, by the
time they begin to think of breaking them, mark me--there'll be no eggs
to break. We shall be all park and suburb. The real men on the land,
what few are left, are dumb and helpless; and these fellows here for
one reason or another don't mean business--they'll talk and tinker and
top-dress--that's all. Does your father take any interest in this? He
could write something very nice."

"He takes interest in everything," said Nedda. "Please go on,
Mr.--Mr.--" She was terribly afraid he would suddenly remember that she
was too young and stop his nice, angry talk.

"Cuthcott. I'm an editor, but I was brought up on a farm, and know
something about it. You see, we English are grumblers, snobs to the
backbone, want to be something better than we are; and education
nowadays is all in the direction of despising what is quiet and humdrum.
We never were a stay-at-home lot, like the French. That's at the back of
this business--they may treat it as they like, Radicals or Tories, but
if they can't get a fundamental change of opinion into the national
mind as to what is a sane and profitable life; if they can't work a
revolution in the spirit of our education, they'll do no good. There'll
be lots of talk and tinkering, tariffs and tommy-rot, and, underneath,
the land-bred men dying, dying all the time. No, madam, industrialism
and vested interests h