And crossing his thin legs, he went on to tell me, with quaint impersonality, a number of instances of how people had been funny in connection with jobs he had not been given.
“You see,” he ended, “the country's in such a state—capital going out of it every day. Enterprise being killed all over the place. There's practically nothing to be had!”
“Ah!” I said, “you think it's worse, then, than it used to be?”
He smiled; in that smile there was a shade of patronage.
“We're going down-hill as fast as ever we can. National character's losing all its backbone. No wonder, with all this molly-coddling going on!”
“Oh!” I murmured, “molly-coddling? Isn't that excessive?”
“Well! Look at the way everything's being done for them! The working classes are losing their self-respect as fast as ever they can. Their independence is gone already!”
“You think?”
“Sure of it! I'll give you an instance——” and he went on to describe to me the degeneracy of certain working men employed by his aunt and his eldest brother Claud and his youngest brother Alan.
“They don't do a stroke more than they're obliged,” he ended; “they know jolly well they've got their Unions, and their pensions, and this Insurance, to fall back on.”