“To give up——”
“Well, Free Trade.”
“And make a virtue of necessity? You see, it has given me up.”
“Did you like—doing that?”
“Smuggling? You called it smuggling this morning, and now that it has nothing more to do with me, I don’t mind if I give it the same name. I was first mixed up with it when I was seventeen, before the age when one grows either a beard or a conscience, and I can’t honestly say that I felt anything but enjoyment of the excitement.”
“Your cousin led you into it?”
“Well, I suppose so. Somebody else led him.”
Her face fell.
“I know—my father.”
“And it went on for a long time, and one got used to the risk and took that as a set-off against the wrong. And after all, we were only carrying out with logical thoroughness the blessed theory of Free Trade, of which we are told we ought as a nation to be so proud. It has ruined us small land-owners, by making it impossible to cultivate the land remuneratively. Who can blame us then if we try to get compensation by taking a hair out of the tail of the dog that bit us?”