“But you will admit,” said Mrs. Squiggs, “that we must have some well-off people to foster culture and give tone to society generally?”
“I agree that the boy who is brought up in a home with a bath tub, and all that that stands for, is likely to be a better citizen than the boy who doesn’t have that advantage. That’s why I want every home to have a bath tub.”
Mrs. Squiggs subsided rather heavily. In youth her Saturday night ablutions had been taken in the middle of the kitchen floor.
“I have a good deal of sympathy,” said Transley, “with any movement which has for its purpose the betterment of human conditions. Any successful man of to-day will admit, if he is frank about it, that he owes his success as much to good luck as to good judgment. If you could find a way, Grant, to take the element of luck out of life, perhaps you would be doing a service which would justify you in keeping those millions which worry you so. But I can’t see that it makes any difference to the prosperity of a country who owns the wealth in it, so long as the wealth is there and is usefully employed. Money doesn’t grow unless it works, and if it works it serves Society just the same as muscle does. You could put all your wealth in a strong-box and bury it under your house up there on the hill, and it wouldn’t increase a nickel in a thousand years, but if you put it to work it makes money for you and money for other people as well. I’m a little nervous about new-fangled notions. It’s easier to wreck the ship than to build a new one, which may not sail any better. What the world needs to-day is the gospel of hard work, and everybody, rich and poor, on the job for all that’s in him. That’s the only way out.”
“We seem to have much in common,” Grant returned. “Hard work is the only way out, and the best way to encourage hard work is to find a system by which every man will be rewarded according to the service rendered.”
At this point Mrs. Transley arose, and the men moved out into the living-room to chat on less contentious subjects. After a time the women joined them, and Grant presently found himself absorbed in conversation with the old rancher’s wife. Zen seemed to pay but little attention to him, and for the first time he began to realize what consummate actresses women are. Had Transley been the most suspicious of husbands—and in reality his domestic vision was as guileless as that of a boy—he could have caught no glint of any smoldering spark of the long ago. Grant found himself thinking of this dissembling quality as one of nature’s provisions designed for the protection of women, much as the sombre plumage of the prairie chicken protects her from the eye of the sportsman. For after all the hunting instinct runs through all men, be the game what it may.
Before they realized how the time had flown Linder was protesting that he must be on his way. At the gate Transley put a hand on Grant’s shoulder.
“I’m prepared to admit,” he said, “that there’s a whole lot in this old world that needs correcting, but I’m not sure that it can be corrected. You have a right to try out your experiments, but take a tip and keep a comfortable cache against the day when you’ll want to settle down and take things as they are. It is true and always has been true that a man who is worth his salt, when he wants a thing, takes it—or goes down in the attempt. The loser may squeal, but that seems to be the path of progress. You can’t beat it.”
“Well, we’ll see,” said Grant, laughing. “Sometimes two men, each worth his salt, collide.”
“As in the meadow of the South Y.D.,” said Transley, with a smile. “You remember that, Y.D.—when our friend here upset the haying operations?”