"We are all the same, as a family. Take the father: he would lay down his life for the working-man, or he thinks so; and yet he is afraid to go in for Socialism, which offers the only solution to the labor question. It is an age of compromise; we are all cowards."
"Digby is so fond of taking his own particular failings and generalizing them," said the still ruffled Helen to nobody in particular.
"People with decided opinions, picturesque people, as you call them, are people with fads; and I hate people with fads," said Lady Joan, "they are ten times more uninteresting than the weathercock sort of people who make compromises. Why should you always behave as if you went by clockwork? It is far too much trouble when, after all, nothing matters. And why do you want to be quarrelling with the age perpetually? It seems a nice comfortable sort of age to me; I suppose it has a different aspect for musical people."
Digby's end of the table was always the most popular whenever he was at home, which was not often enough to spoil his reputation,—more popular at all events than the other end, where Lady Raleigh insisted on making the tea, and made it very badly, and where the Squire opened his letters and found they were mostly bills. If his eldest son had not been monopolizing the conversation on this morning in particular, the efforts of Sir Marcus to make a sensation by sighing deeply and rustling the letter in his hand might have succeeded in attracting some notice; but as it was, he was quite unheeded, and his wife went on spilling the milk behind the urn, and filling up the teapot with water which had boiled half an hour ago, while the noisy chatter was carried on uninterruptedly round Digby and Lady Joan.
"Of all forms of self-indulgence, unintelligent self-sacrifice is the most degrading. Somebody says that the time of the clever people is taken up in undoing the harm done by the good people."
"By the stupid people," objected Helen brusquely.
"That is just the point," began Digby, vigorously; but his mother's complaining voice broke in upon the conversation.
"What is to be done, Helen? Have you heard, my dear? Mrs. Bates says she cannot let me have more than three pounds of butter a week. Did you ever know anything more provoking? Oh, the difficulty of getting dairy produce in the country! Why did we ever leave Cadogan Square?"
Perhaps country life was more trying to Lady Raleigh than to any other member of her family; for, with the inconsequence of woman, she could not forgive her husband for selling their London house, although herself the first instigator of the scheme. To remind him continually of the fact that the place did not agree with her, she refused to trust herself to the handy man's whip, and never walked further than the garden gate, by which means she preserved her constitution admirably, and ruined her nervous system; and in this unhealthy condition of mind she shut herself up in Murville Manor, where her sole occupations became the mismanagement of her household, and the perusal of the illustrated papers.
Her last remark caught the Squire's ear, and gave him the opportunity he wanted.