I returned an evasive, perhaps a flippant answer, and for some minutes the conversation turned on less unseasonable topics to the occasion. Then breaking his silence, he said:
"I hope you don't think I'm a socialist because I said, what is democracy."
"Not at all," I answered, "but I don't see why you shouldn't be a socialist."
"I give you my word of honour I'm not," he protested. "If I had my way I'd stand them up against a wall and shoot them."
"What is socialism?" I asked.
"Oh, you know what I mean, Henderson and Ramsay Macdonald and all that sort of thing," he answered. "I'm about fed up with the working man."
"But you're a working man yourself, I should have thought."
He was silent for quite a long time and I thought his mind had wandered to other things. But I was wrong; he was thinking my statement over in all its bearings, for at last he said:
"Look here, I'm not a working man. Hang it all, I was at Harrow."