"You're jealous," retorted Margaret. "Mr. Samson 's quite all right, and I won't have him sneered at after he 's been paying me compliments."
"Once I hit an Honorable with a tennis racket. It slipped out of my hand just as I was taking a fearful smack at a high one and hit him like a boomerang. So I 'm not as jealous as you might think."
"One can't throw a tennis racket without hitting an Honorable nowadays. That 's nothing," said Margaret. "And you 're just an ordinary person, anyhow. Mr. Samson, now—he 's not only a gentleman, but he looks like it and sounds like it, and you could tell him with a telescope twenty miles off for the real thing."
"Ye-es." Ford drew a leisurely thumb across the foreground of his picture and surveyed the result with his head on one side. "You know," he went on, kneading reflectively at the sticky masses of paint, "some of that 's true. He does sound exactly like it. If you wanted to know the broad general view of the class that he represents, and all the other classes that take a pattern from it, you 'd be fairly safe in asking Samson. Those dashing men of the world, you know—they 're all for the domestic virtues and loyalty and fair play. If you find fault with gambling and drinking and cursing, they say you 've got the Nonconformist Conscience. But when they stand for a principle, they 've got the consciences of Sunday School pupil-teachers. Samson's ideal of England is a nation of virtuous women and honest men, large families, Sunday observance, and no damned French kickshaws. For that, he 'd go to the stake smiling."
"Well," said Margaret, "why not?"
"Oh, I 'm not saying anything against him," answered Ford. "I 'm telling you what he stands for and how far he counts when he turns on the oracle."
"You mean that Kafir business, of course?"
"Yes," said Ford. "That 's what I mean."
"I gathered," said Margaret slowly, "that you agreed with him about that."
He was still at work with his colors and did not raise his head as he answered.