‘Usually so. Now and then the question is asked, but the questioner is called an eccentric. There was one shareholder that made a great fuss about the tramway people, who are worked almost into brutishness for the sake of the dividend. It was only a woman, you know; and her out-of-the-way proceeding made her quite notorious at once. The truth is, everybody feels that the poor people would grind each other just as hard, if they could.’
‘Ah, the poor people would like to be just as wicked as their betters! Is that what you mean?’
‘I think it is, Miss Socrates.’
‘But how do the betters spend the money? What can be the use of it after all?’
‘The use of it? Did you never hear of yachting, hunting, pretty pictures, pretty women, good wine? Poor little savage, you have never had so much as a taste of life! Why you may spend twenty or thirty thousand pounds in getting a good breed of race-horses, if that is your hobby. You get a hobby, that’s the way it’s done—horses, hounds, women, pictures, or china, anything will do—and keep on sinking your money till you have the rarest and the best.’
‘Is there any taste in that way as to improving the breed of men? Does a rich man ever buy a slum, and keep on playing with it till he has turned it into a paradise?’
‘No; breeding is chiefly done for the shows.’
‘Are all the people in Europe as funny as that?’ said Victoria, ‘or is it only the English? But see, the sun has struck the big banyan: it is dinner time! What a lot you have told me, but you have only told me half. There are Rich Stupids, I see, as well as Poor Stupids, and I think the rich ones are the worse off.’
CHAPTER XX.
A VILLAGE FESTIVAL.
It has never occurred to me till this moment, but certainly we two live here alone. There are a few other people on the Island, I believe, and I see them every day, but only as pictures. I talk to them too, but only as one talks to pictures, not much heeding the answer back.