"But in the midst of it all,"—she lowered her voice and spoke now as one positively beset by weighty affairs—"I keep worrying about Julian. Just because,"—she glanced back at him as he stood talking "Emergency Corps" with Madge—"just because he doesn't in the least worry about himself. Have you heard about the way his relations are behaving?"
"No," said Napier, disingenuously. "How are they behaving?"
"Simply abominably. Some of his friends, too. They cold-shoulder him in private; and in public—they cut him!" Her eyes gleamed with anger. "If they think that's the way to discourage Julian, they know very little!"
"I wish some one would discourage him from rubbing my old man the wrong way."
"He doesn't mean to," she said, with a proprietary air that haunted Gavan afterwards, "but, you see, Sir William and Julian approach everything from opposite poles."
Behind his soreness and annoyance, Napier was secretly amused at "the child's judicial air," as he characterized it to himself. "At opposite poles, are they? It would be interesting to know what they were—those 'poles.'"
"Oh, you think I don't know? Well, I do. Sir William's idea of the problem of government is the same as his idea of the problem of the individual. To acquire. Julian's is to apportion. To administer."
"Who told you all that?" he inquired gently.
She reddened. "You can't say it isn't so. To take care of other people's interests," repeated the parrot, "is the only way to take care of your own."
"Does Julian find the axiom work in his case?"