"Well," she moved uneasily, "one is in the Guards and the other is still at Oxford——"
"And you were sent to an expensive school for young ladies at Brighton? In a few generations, I suppose, you will be ousted from your big place in your turn!"
"But we know how to take care of our money. It won't be squandered in racing and cards and dissolute living."
"How do you know? Doesn't it depend on the individual? There are plenty of pedigree landlords who are models of stewardship and right thinking, doing their duty by the country and their responsibilities, just as there are self-made men who are selfish and hard and tyrannical. It isn't entirely a question of birth and heredity. I am of opinion that if a man with an inherited position and property is false to his trust he should be deprived of it by law, but when he does his best he should be protected from attacks that are prompted more often by jealousy than by concern for the poor. What do the majority of self-made men go for, once they are 'made'? Titles and 'places.' Isn't it true?"
The girl crumbled the toast on her plate with restless fingers. "Everything is all wrong," she burst out presently. "My father won't see that we ought to keep only just enough for ourselves and share the rest with the people who have helped him to make his money. Why should we have an estate in the country and a sort of palace in London, while our workmen are living in slums! It's abominable. I admit we are as bad in our way as the families that can trace their descent for hundreds of years and look upon their lands and their tenants as just mediums of supply for their luxuries and amusements. It will always be the same, I suppose!"
"It has been the same since the beginning of the world," said Flint, "each man for himself. It's human nature. Have some more coffee?"
"Yes, please. It's delicious. Miss Abigail seems to think it's wrong to have decent food. Why she and her kind aren't all dead from poisoning I can't imagine."
"The survival of the fittest, perhaps."
"Their hearts and their souls are bound up in the work, and their stomachs don't seem to matter. I feel I am horribly material and greedy. Perhaps I haven't a soul or a heart, only a stomach!"
"In that case you wouldn't be out here," he suggested for her comfort, "giving your time and your money in a good cause."