"I hope so."
"1950," her mother mused. "So you think that, when you're fifteen years older than I, you'll see the millennium? It sounds a long way off—1950. But, Muriel, you've no idea how near it really is and how little people will have changed."
"You said just now how much they had changed in the last ten years."
"I think that in these ten years they have accomplished what ordinarily would have begun long before and taken longer. You can't expect to have another reign like Queen Victoria's."
"No, thank goodness," said Muriel fervidly.
"England wouldn't be England without that reign."
"The question is, 'Is England our England?'" Muriel countered. "I should say that England belongs to a few rich people and that the reason why it does was the worship of money during the Victorian Age."
"I don't think that people worshiped money then more than they did at any other period of the world's history. People will always worship money, because people worship themselves, and they think that money gives them the opportunity to express that worship."
"It's disgusting," Muriel ejaculated.
"Yes, but have you ever thought how easy it is to be disgusted by anything to do with money when one has plenty oneself? I feel that the best that can be said for your Socialist state is that if nobody could have more than a certain amount and everybody had that amount it might end in people's despising money."