“Do I?”
“Always. That’s what one loves about you. You were the only person who ever expected anything of me, and you gave me confidence to expect something of myself.”
“Then it’s not a bad thing?”
“It’s a splendid thing in a way, only you need to be able to love a lot of people to bear up against your disappointments. I can’t do that. I find them too amusing. I’m too easily pleased with everything they do, and, of course, I never stop to think.”
“But some things make you think.”
“What things?”
“Having no money is one of them.”
“I don’t know that the poor worry much about thinking, and lack of money is chronic with them.”
“Joe tried to think. The trouble was that he didn’t know how. It took him as far as the Trade Union, and left him there expecting it to do the rest. That’s the trouble all round. There has been thinking enough to make the union, but not enough to use it. The mere fact of union seems to swamp thought, even in the leaders. When they speak they are always trying to say not what they themselves think, but what they fancy the collective body of men wants them to think. The result is that events always move just a little too fast for them, and they are tied hand and foot and left to the mercy of the capitalists who can afford to wait longer to see how the cat is going to jump.”