"I've been—approached," he said, as if the word made it the more remote.
"What did you say?"
"Said I wouldn't. Jeff, I believe you started the confounded thing."
"I've talked a lot," said Jeff. "But any fool knows you've got to do it. Choate, you're about the only hope of tradition and decency here in Addington. Don't you know that?"
"I'm a weak man," said Alston, looking up at him unhappily. "I don't half care for these things. I like the decent thing done, but, Jeff, I don't want to pitch into the dirty business and call names and be called names and uncover smells. I'd rather quit the whole business and go to Europe."
"And let Addington go to pot? Why, we'd all rather go to Europe, if Addington could be kept on her pins without us. But she can't. We've got to see the old girl through."
"She's gone to pot anyway," said Choate. "So's the country. There aren't any Americans now. They're blasted aliens."
"Ain't you an American?" asked Jeff, forgetting his grammar. "I am. And I'm going to die in my tracks before I'm downed."
"You will be downed."
"I don't care. I don't care whether in a hundred years' time it's stated in the history books that there was once a little tribe called New Englanders and if you want to learn about 'em the philologists send you to the inscriptions of Mary Wilkins and Robert Frost."