“Ah, before that I shall make you like me.”
“That’s very possible, and you’ll see how I shall fling you over!”
“Why then do you object so to his views—his ideas about the way the people are to come up?”
“Because I think he’ll get over them.”
“Never—never!” cried Hyacinth. “I’ve only known him an hour or two, but I deny that with all my strength.”
“Is that the way you’re going to make me like you—contradicting me so?” Miss Muniment asked 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’re 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 ring of laughter. “You say that just like a man my brother described to me three days ago, a little man at some club whose hair stood up—Paul imitated the way he raved and stamped. I don’t mean that you do either, but you use almost the same words as him.” Hyacinth scarce knew what to make of this allusion or of the picture offered him of Paul Muniment casting ridicule on 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 great things 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.”