"I'll never get home in time. The old man's getting a bit radgy again."
"Well, of course, if you're always going to be tied to your father's apron strings...."
"I didn't say I wasn't coming!" Philip broke in hotly.
"Right-ho! We'll go through the back. It's nearer!"
It is almost no exaggeration to say that when Philip came home that night, his head was clamorous with a new gospel, his eyes shone with revelation, his too inflammable nature was ablaze! He walked in unsteadily as if he had been drinking a heady wine. He looked towards his father with a certain pity in his glance. Was he not too a victim of these iniquitous conditions which the fiery-bearded man had described with such blood-freezing fury? Did Reb Monash know it? Of course he did not know it! "Hapathy!" the man had thundered, "Hapathy! 'Ere is the henemy! Your fathers is strangling their children. What for? Hapathy! Your children is drinking the blood of their fathers! What for? What for, I ask? Hapathy! Deny it who can!"
Reb Monash was engaged in a conversation with a lady who had two sons to dispose into a chayder. He thought it discreet for the moment to remain outwardly unaware of the sinful hour Philip had chosen for his return. Open disapproval would have displayed Philip as no satisfactory sample, so to speak, of the paternal wares. He turned to Philip and with a gentle significance the two-sonned lady could not have fathomed, inquired, "Sewelson?"
"No!" replied Philip, "Socialism!"
Reb Monash's lips tightened imperceptibly. He resumed the conversation with his client.
"Of course," declared Philip enthusiastically some time later, "there's absolutely no doubt of it! Shelley was an out-and-out Socialist! As much of a Socialist as that candidate fellow, Dan what's-his-name!"
"You're right! Shelley was all there!" affirmed Harry. He beamed pleasantly upon his convert. "All the decent chaps have been Socialists from the beginning. Christ too, he was no end of a Socialist!"