“Ah, before that I shall make you like me.”
“That’s very possible, and you’ll see how I’ll fling you over!”
“Why, then, do you object so to his views—his ideas about the way the people will come up?”
“Because I think he’ll get over them.”
“Never—never!” cried Hyacinth. “I have only known him an hour or two, but I deny that, with all my strength.”
“Is that the way you are going to make me like you—contradicting me so?” Miss Muniment inquired, with familiar archness.
“What’s the use, when you tell me I shall be sacrificed? One might as well perish for a lamb as for a sheep.”
“I don’t believe you’re a lamb at all. Certainly you are not, if you want all the great people pulled down, and the most dreadful scenes enacted.”
“Don’t you believe in human equality? Don’t you want anything done for the groaning, toiling millions—those who have been cheated and crushed and bamboozled from the beginning of time?”
Hyacinth asked this question with considerable heat, but the effect of it was to send his companion off into a new fit of laughter. “You say that just like a man that my brother described to me three days ago; a little man at some club, whose hair stood up—Paul imitated the way he glowered and screamed. I don’t mean that you scream, you know; but you use almost the same words that he did.” Hyacinth scarcely knew what to make of this allusion, or of the picture offered to him of Paul Muniment casting ridicule upon those who spoke in the name of the down-trodden. But Rosy went on, before he had time to do more than reflect that there would evidently be a great deal more to learn about her brother: “I haven’t the least objection to seeing the people improved, but I don’t want to see the aristocracy lowered an inch. I like so much to look at it up there.”