"I'll tell him what you say. Belike it would please him."
"Better not. He's not one to care what I might say. I'm a slight man in his eyes. He might even think it was cheek my praising him."
"He likes praise really, though he'd never admit it."
"Depends where it comes from. We don't set no store on the praise of small people and the humble-minded. The praise we ache for be most times withheld. That is if you are ambitious, like Jacob is. A man spoke well of in newspapers like him—what should he care for me?"
"He thinks well of you and says it's a fine thing the way you work."
"No, no—think twice, Margery. You're inventing now—to please me. He's got a very good knowledge of what's worth praise; and a man that does his own duty without flinching, like your man, isn't going to admire them who only do the same. I do no more than that, and the time hasn't come yet when we pat a man on the back for doing his duty; though perhaps it will be a rare sight in the next generation."
"I wish we could look forward. There's some things I'd dearly like to know," said Margery.
"Lord! What a lot we should do to fight for ourselves and them we care about if we could do that," he answered. "If we could look on ten years even and see how we had changed—how habits had grown up and fastened on us, how faith in our neighbours had gone, perhaps, and how, with the years, we'd got more cunning, and harder and more out for Number One—how we'd set to work to fight ourselves—eh?"
"We ought to live so that we shouldn't be afraid to look on ten years," she assured him. "Why not so live that your heart will be bigger and your hope higher and your faith purer in ten years?"
"That's your mother," he answered.