“What were they doing the day you were there, Lorne?” asked Williams.
“Motorcar legislation,” replied Lorne. “Considerably excited about it, too. One of them had had three dogs killed on his estate. I saw his letter about it in the Times.”
“I don’t see anything to laugh at in that,” declared Stella. “Dogs are dogs.”
“They are, sister, especially in England.”
“Laundresses aren’t washerwomen there,” observed Mrs Murchison. “I’d like you to see the colour of the things he’s brought home with him, Mrs Williams. Clean or dirty, to the laundry they go—weeks it will take to get them right again—ingrained London smut and nothing else.”
“In this preference business they’ve got to lead the way,” Williams reverted. “We’re not so grown up but what grandma’s got to march in front. Now, from your exhaustive observation of Great Britain, extending over a period of six weeks, is she going to?”
“My exhaustive observation,” said Lorne, smiling, “enables me to tell you one thing with absolute accuracy; and that is that nobody knows. They adore Wallingham over there—he’s pretty nearly a god—and they’d like to do as he tells them, and they’re dead sick of theoretic politics; but they’re afraid—oh, they’re afraid!”
“They’ll do well to ca’ canny,” said John Murchison.
“There’s two things in the way, at a glance,” Lorne went on. “The conservatism of the people—it isn’t a name, it’s a fact—the hostility and suspicion; natural enough: they know they’re stupid, and they half suspect they’re fair game. I suppose the Americans have taught them that. Slow—oh, slow! More interested in the back-garden fence than anything else. Pick up a paper, at the moment when things are being done, mind, all over the world, done against them—when their shipping is being captured, and their industries destroyed, and their goods undersold beneath their very noses—and the thing they want to know is—Why Are the Swallows Late? I read it myself, in a ha’penny morning paper, too—that they think rather dangerously go-ahead—a whole column, headed, to inquire what’s the matter with the swallows. The Times the same week had a useful leader on Alterations in the Church Service, and a special contribution on Prayers for the Dead. Lord, they need ‘em! Those are the things they THINK about! The session’s nearly over, and there’s two Church Discipline Bills, and five Church Bills—bishoprics and benefices, and Lord knows what—still to get through. Lot of anxiety about ‘em, apparently! As to a business view of politics, I expect the climate’s against it. They’ll see over a thing—they’re fond of doing that—or under it, or round one side of it, but they don’t seem to have any way of seeing THROUGH it. What they just love is a good round catchword; they’ve only got to hear themselves say it often enough, and they’ll take it for gospel. They’re convinced out of their own mouths. There was the driver of a bus I used to ride on pretty often, and if he felt like talking, he’d always begin, ‘As I was a-saying of yesterday—’ Well, that’s the general idea—to repeat what they were a-sayin’ of yesterday; and it doesn’t matter two cents that the rest of the world has changed the subject. They’ve been a-sayin’ a long time that they object to import duties of any sort or kind, and you won’t get them to SEE the business in changing. If they do this it won’t be because they want to, it will be because Wallingham wants them to.”
“I guess that’s so,” said Williams. “And if Wallingham gets them to he ought to have a statue in every capital in the Empire. He will, too. Good cigar this, Lorne! Where’d you get it?”