He got up, and shook his head at her, smilingly, tenderly. She had made him feel old, and alien to this strange new day.
"You're impossible, dear," said he, "because you're so good. You've only to see right things to follow them and you believe everybody's the same."
"But why not?" she asked him quickly. "Am I to think myself better than they are?"
"Not better. Only more prepared. By generations of integrity. Think of that old boy up there." He glanced affectionately at the judge, a friend since his childhood, when the painted eyes had followed him about the room and it had been a kind of game to try vainly to escape them. "Take a mellow soil like your inheritance and the inheritance of a lot of 'em here in Addington. Plant kindness in it and decency and—"
"And love of man," said Miss Amabel quietly.
"Yes. Put it that way, if you like it better. I mean the determination to play a square game. Not to gorge, but make the pile go round. Plant in that kind of a soil and, George! what a growth you get!"
"I don't find fewer virtues among my plainer friends."
"No, no, dear! But you do find less—less background."
"That's our fault, Jeff. We've made their background. It's a factory wall. It's the darkness of a mine."
"Exactly. Knock a window in here and there, but don't chuck the reins of government into the poor chaps' hands and tell 'em to drive to the devil."