“Oh, I know him!”
“But——”
“Oh, I know him!” he repeated, the faint note of protest in her voice serving to excite him. “He was at Manchester. There were a hundred thousand men out of work—starving, seeing their wives starve, seeing their children starve. And they came to Manchester and met. And he was there, and he was one of those who signed the order for the soldiers to ride them down—men, women, and children, without arms, and packed so closely that they could not flee!”
“Well,” she said pertly, “you would not have us all murdered in our beds?”
He opened his mouth, and he shut it again. He knew that he had been a fool. He knew that he had gone near to betraying himself. She was nineteen, and thoughtless; she had been bred in the class he hated; she had never heard any political doctrines save those which that class, the governing class, held; and though twice or thrice he had essayed faintly to imbue her with his notions of liberty and equality and fraternity, and had pictured her with the red cap of freedom perched on her flaxen head, the only liberty in which he had been able to interest her had been her own!
By-and-by, in different conditions, she might be more amenable, should he then think it worth while to convert her. For the present his eloquence was stayed in midstream. Yet he could not be altogether silent, for he was a man to whom words were very dear.
“Well,” he said in a lower tone, “there is something in that, sweet. But I know worse of him than that. You may think it right to transport a man for seven years for poaching a hare——”
“They should not poach,” she said lightly, “and they would not be transported!”
“But you will think differently of flogging a man to death!”
Her face flushed.