'Ours at Olmer get worse.'
'It's a process for the extirpation of the landlords.'
'Then down goes the country.'
'They 've got their case, their papers tell us.'
'I know they have; but we've got the soil, and we'll make a, fight of it.'
'They can fight too, they say.'
'I should be sorry to think they couldn't if they're Englishmen.'
She spoke so like his old Charlotte of the younger days that her brother partly laughed.
'Parliamentary fighting 's not much to your taste or mine. They 've lost their stomach for any other. The battle they enjoy is the battle that goes for the majority. Gauge their valour by that.'
'To be sure,' said his responsive sister. She changed her note. 'But what I say is, let the nobles keep together and stick to their class. There's nothing to fear then. They must marry among themselves, think of the blood: it's their first duty. Or better a peasant girl! Middle courses dilute it to the stuff in a publican's tankard. It 's an adulterous beast who thinks of mixing old wine with anything.'