"You're advocating communism, sir?"
Bailly shook his head.
"I'm advocating nothing. I'm trying to find out what you advocate."
"I can't help feeling," George said, stubbornly, "that a man has to look after himself."
And as he walked home he confessed freely enough in his own mind:
"I'm advocating George Morton. How can Squibs expect me to bother with any one else when I have so far to go?"
XIX
He thrust Squibs' uncomfortable prods from his brain. He applied himself to his books—useful books. Education and culture were more important to him than the physical reactions of overworked labour or the mental processes of men who advocated violence. Such distracting questions, however, were uncomfortably in the air. Allen, one of the poor men against whom the careful Rogers had warned him long ago, called on him one cold night. The manner of his address made George wonder if Squibs had been talking to him, too.
"Would like a few minutes' chat, Morton. No one worth while's in Princeton. It won't queer you to have me in your room."
No, George decided. That was an opening one might expect from Allen. The man projected an appreciable power from his big, bony figure; his angular face. George had heard vaguely that he had worked in a factory, preparing himself for college. He knew from his own observation that Allen wasn't above waiting at commons, and he had seen the lesser men turn to him as a leader.