"That high youth ought to have his trousers taken down and be birched. What are we coming to, when boys like him lecture their elders on how to run the world?"
"That question," Radley retorted, "Adam probably asked Eve, when Cain and Abel decided to be Socialists."
"I tell you, these self-opinionated boys want whipping, and so do you, Master Doe, with your damned Fabianism."
"Oh, come, come," objected Radley. "I like them to be gloriously self-confident. Young blood is heady stuff. And there'd be something wrong, if a body full of young blood didn't have a head full of glittering illusions."
"Rot!" proclaimed Chappy.
"I like them to be Socialists and Futurists and everything. If they don't want to put the world to rights, who will?"
"Damned rot!"
"It's nothing of the sort," rejoined Radley, getting annoyed. "They ought to break out at this time. You can't bind up a bud to prevent it bursting into flower."
"If I'd children who burst like that, I'd bind them for you!"
"No, you wouldn't," contradicted Radley, softening again. "You'd expect them to be intolerant of you as old fashioned. You'd withdraw behind your cigar-smoke and your old-fashioned ideas, and leave them to put the world to rights. After all, it's their world."