“Yes. Like everything else. It would take a four-years’ course in Greats to argue it out, Roger. Come back to me—if you’re here and I’m here then—and we’ll see what we can make of it.”
“I will,” said Oldmeadow, rising, for the room was growing dark. “And before that, I hope.”
“After all, you know,” Palgrave observed, “England isn’t in any danger of becoming Buddhistic; there’s not much nihilism about her, is there, but hardly much Christianity, either. England has evolved all sorts of things besides Oxford and Coldbrooks. She’s evolved industrialism and factory-towns.”
“I don’t consider industrialism and factory-towns incompatible with Christianity, you know,” Oldmeadow observed. “Good-bye, my dear boy.”
“Good-bye, Roger,” Palgrave grasped his hand. “You’ve been most awfully kind.”
CHAPTER XXII
“ISN’T it becoming to him, Mother? And how tall he looks!” said Nancy, holding Oldmeadow off in his khaki for displayal.
He had only written a line of his failure and that he would come as soon as he could and see them all and tell in full of his interview with Palgrave. And he had motored over to The Little House this afternoon in early November.
Nancy was showing an unexpected gaiety. “What a nice grilled-salmon colour you are, too,” she said.
He divined the self-protective instinct under the gaiety. Most of the women in England were being gayer and more talkative at this time, in order to keep up. Nancy was thin and white; but she was keeping up. And she had put on a charming dress to receive him in.