‘Propaganda! Starvation wages! Ah, I see you have gone deeply into these matters. How strangely that word sounds on your lips—propaganda!’
Adela reddened.
‘Why strangely, Mr. Eldon?’
‘One associates it with such very different speakers; it has such a terrible canting sound. I hope you will not get into the habit of using it—for your own sake.’
‘I am not likely to use it much. I suppose I have heard it so often from Alfred lately. Please don’t think,’ she added rather hastily, ‘that I have become a Socialist. Indeed, I dislike the name; I find it implies so many things that I could never approve of.’
Her way of speaking the last sentence would have amused a dispassionate critic, it was so distinctively the tone of Puritan maidenhood. From lips like Adela’s it is delicious to hear such moral babbling. Oh, the gravity of conviction in a white-souled English girl of eighteen! Do you not hear her say those words: ‘things that I could never approve of’?
As her companion did not immediately reply, she again raised the field-glass to her eyes and swept the prospect.
‘Can you see your brother on the road?’ Hubert inquired.
‘No, not yet. There is a trap driving this way. Why, Alfred sitting in it! Oh, it is Mr. Mutimer’s trap I see. He must have met Alfred at the station and have given him a ride.’
‘Evidently they are great friends,’ commented Eldon.