iv
"What I should like to do," explained Claudia, "would be to re-shuffle the world a little. I could do it so nicely. I'd separate people under forty and people over forty. They could meet, and talk, and the people over forty wouldn't be made to feel they were quite useless; but they shouldn't have any power over the younger ones."
"It would be a splendid idea." Patricia was eagerly responsive.
"For a month," agreed Mrs. Mayne, with her natural irony.
"For always," firmly insisted Claudia. "Oh, you'd see a change."
"Forty in years?" asked Edgar. "Isn't that rather arbitrary?"
"I didn't mean I'd destroy them. Only separate them."
Edgar laughed a little.
"I believe you'd have a reactionary 'left' even then," he said, agreeably. "And a revolutionary 'right,' too. And another thing, Claudia ... you don't take into account the fact that some quite young people are obscurantist. When you think of young people you always think of yourself. Never of Johnny Rix or Daphne Petton...."
"Oh, but they're awful! I'd expose them at birth!" declared Claudia.