"Yes, work," she answered promptly. "Everybody should have his daily job, prescribed either by the state or by necessity; but something he must do if both he and society would continue to exist."
Ruyler elevated his eyebrows and looked at her curiously. "Socialism. I didn't know you had ever heard of it."
"Aileen and I are not such fools as we look—as you were good enough to intimate just now. We went to a series of lectures early last winter over at the University, on Socialism—a lot of us formed a class, but all except Aileen and I dropped out.
"We continued to read for a time after the lectures were over, but of course that didn't last. One drops everything for want of stimulus, and when one begins to flutter again one is lost.
"But I heard and read and thought enough to deduce that the only vital interest in life after one's secret happiness—which one would not dare spread out too thin if one could in this American life—is necessary work well done. And that is quite different from those fussy interests and fads we create or take up for the sake of thinking we are busy and interested.
"Polly's mother once told me she never was so happy in her life as during those weeks after the earthquake and fire when all the servants had run away and she had to cook for the family out in the street on a stove they bought down in a little shop in Polk Street and set up and surrounded on three sides by 'inside blinds.' She happened to have a talent for cooking, and without her the family would have starved. Polly tied a towel round her head and did the housework, or stood in a line and got the daily rations from the Government. She never thought once of—"
"Of what?"
"Oh, of doing anything rather than expire of boredom. She and Rex had been married a year and were living at home. Rex and Mr. Carter helped excavate down in the business district, as the working class wouldn't lift a finger as long as the Government was feeding them."
"There you are! Their ideal is complete leisure, and that of our delicate products of the highest civilization—compulsory jobs! What does progress mean but the leisure to enjoy the arts and all the finer fruits of progress? What else do we men really work for?"
"Progress has gone too far and defeated its own ends. Every healthy human being should be forced to work six hours a day.