"Not much, perhaps, but there is the principle. Still, our servants here are our friends. Blother often spanked me as a child, and Arthur and I played fives together at school. I don't want to make trouble here. I think, considering what we have done to help the rich, nobody can call us disloyal for standing outside."
"I am sure your father would much prefer it."
"Has he talked about it at all?" Edward asked a little anxiously. "What are his views of the movement?"
"I think he feels that it is a little too upsetting altogether. He showed no disposition to throw his dinner out of the window this evening."
"That would, perhaps, be too much to expect of him," said Edward. "Twenty years ago I am sure he would have been the first to do it."
"I am not so sure about that," I said. "He seems to have taken his own quiet line from the beginning. He has forced himself rigidly into a life of luxury, and, as far as I have observed, has never flinched from it."
"No," said Edward. "He has led a noble and beautiful life of self-sacrifice, and it sometimes crosses my mind that it has rewarded him by making him happier living as a rich man than as a poor man."
"The same idea has occasionally crossed my mind," I said. "I shouldn't drag him into it, if I were you."
"I think perhaps you are right. I should not like to distract his mind by trying to persuade him to take a leading part in this great fight for freedom. Let him go on in his quiet unselfish way. He has really been fighting for us, and preparing the way for this all his life."