"Yes—and you think we are growing also to that stage in England? Perhaps you are right; we want some great national danger to pull us together."
"You will rust out otherwise, and it will be such a pity."
"You think we are good enough to keep?"
"In your highest development—like Her Ladyship—you are, I should think, the best things for a country in the world."
She knew he was drawing her out and was very pleased to be so drawn.
"Tell me about us—what have we that is good?"
"You have a sense of values—you know what is worth having—You have had hundreds of years to acquire the quality of looking ahead. No person of the classes from which the Radical statesmen are drawn has naturally the quality of looking ahead; he has to be told about it, and then get it if he can—it is not in his blood because his forebears only had to snatch what they could for themselves and their families day by day, and were not required to observe any broad horizon."
"How very true—you are a student of heredity then, Miss Bush?"
"Yes—it explains everything. I examine it in myself; I am always combating ordinary and cramping instincts which I find I have got."