want leisure and quiet to think over things."

"Well, there's one subject you might turn your attention to. You'll
have been educated like a gentleman?"

"Nine wasted years--five at Harrow, four at Cambridge."

"See here, then. You're daft about the working-class and have no use
for any other. But what in the name of goodness do you know about
working-men?... I come out of them myself, and have lived next door to
them all my days. Take them one way and another, they're a decent
sort, good and bad like the rest of us. But there's a wheen daft folk
that would set them up as models--close to truth and reality, says you.
It's sheer ignorance, for you're about as well acquaint with the
working-man as with King Solomon. You say I make up fine stories about
tinklers and sailor-men because I know nothing about them. That's
maybe true. But you're at the same job yourself. You ideelise the
working man, you and your kind, because you're ignorant. You say that
he's seeking for truth, when he's only looking for a drink and a rise
in wages. You tell me he's near reality, but I tell you that his
notion of reality is often just a short working day and looking on at a
footba'-match on Saturday.... And when you run down what you call the
middle-classes that do three-quarters of the world's work and keep the
machine going and the working-man in a job, then I tell you you're
talking havers. Havers!"

Mr. McCunn, having delivered his defence of the bourgeoisie, rose
abruptly and went to bed. He felt jarred and irritated. His innocent
little private domain had been badly trampled by this stray bull of a
poet. But as he lay in bed, before blowing out his candle, he had
recourse to Walton, and found a passage on which, as on a pillow, he
went peacefully to sleep:

"As I left this place, and entered into the next field, a second
pleasure entertained me; 'twas a handsome milkmaid, that had not yet
attained so much age and wisdom as to load her mind with any fears of
many things that will never be, as too many men too often do; but she
cast away all care, and sang like a nightingale; her voice was good,
and the ditty fitted for it; it was the smooth song that was made by
Kit Marlow now at least fifty years ago. And the milkmaid's mother
sung an answer to it, which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his
younger days. They were old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good; I
think much better than the strong lines that are now in f