"Dick, you're a fool."
"Oh, yes," said Dick, with a bitterness that curled his lip a little, "I'm a young fool, too, I suppose. Well, thank God for that. I am young, and I know it, and just what I'm getting out of it and what I've a right to get. You can't play that game with me, Uncle Jack. You simply can't do it. The old game's played out."
"And what," said Raven mildly, "is the old game? And what's the new one going to be? You'll have to tell me. I don't know."
"The old game," said Dick, "was precisely what it was in politics. The old men made the rules and the young were expected to conform. The old men made wars and the young fought 'em. The old men lied and skulked and the young had to pull them out of the holes they got into. I suppose you'd say the War was won at Chequers Court. Well, I shouldn't. I should say it was won by the young men who had their brains blown out, and lost their eyes and their legs."
"No," said Raven quietly, "I shouldn't say the War was won at Chequers Court. We needn't fight over that. The thing that gets me is why we need to fight at all. There's been a general armistice and Eastern Europe doesn't seem to have heard of it. They go on scrapping. You don't seem to have heard of it either. You come home here and find me peaceably retired to Charlotte and Jerry and my Sabine Farm, and you proceed to declare war on me. What the devil possesses you?"
"Yes," said Dick, the muscle twitching in his lip, "I do find you here. And Nan with you."
"Dick," said Raven sharply, "we'll leave Nan out of this."
Dick, though the tone was one that had called him to attention years ago, told himself he wasn't afraid of it now. Those old bugaboos wouldn't work.
"I am going," he said, "to marry Nan."
"Good for you," responded Raven. "No man could do better."