“Well, at all events, this literary class represent the natural aspirations and wishes of the people at large, though it may not exactly lead them, and, in spite of all you say, Orde, I defy you to find a really sound English Radical who would not sympathize with those aspirations.”
Pagett spoke with some warmth, and he had scarcely ceased when a well-appointed dog-cart turned into the compound gates, and Orde rose saying: “Here is Edwards, the Master of the Lodge I neglect so diligently, come to talk about accounts, I suppose.”
As the vehicle drove up under the porch Pagett also rose, saying with the trained effusion born of much practice: “But this is also my friend, my old and valued friend Edwards. I'm delighted to see you. I knew you were in India, but not exactly where.”
“Then it isn't accounts, Mr. Edwards,” said Orde, cheerily.
“Why, no, sir; I heard Mr. Pagett was coming, and as our works were closed for the New Year I thought I would drive over and see him.”
“A very happy thought. Mr. Edwards, you may not know, Orde, was a leading member of our Radical Club at Switchton when I was beginning political life, and I owe much to his exertions. There's no pleasure like meeting an old friend, except, perhaps, making a new one. I suppose, Mr. Edwards, you stick to the good old cause?”
“Well, you see, sir, things are different out here. There's precious little one can find to say against the Government, which was the main of our talk at home, and them that do say things are not the sort o' people a man who respects himself would like to be mixed up with. There are no politics, in a manner of speaking, in India. It's all work.”
“Surely you are mistaken, my good friend. Why I have come all the way from England just to see the working of this great National movement.”
“I don't know where you're going to find the nation as moves to begin with, and then you'll be hard put to it to find what they are moving about. It's like this, sir,” said Edwards, who had not quite relished being called “my good friend.” “They haven't got any grievance—nothing to hit with, don't you see, sir; and then there's not much to hit against, because the Government is more like a kind of general Providence, directing an old-established state of things, than that at home, where there's something new thrown down for us to fight about every three months.”
“You are probably, in your workshops, full of English mechanics, out of the way of learning what the masses think.”