Preaching socialism was a fool's job. He'd far better give it up and take on with something else. Of course if he felt he had to do it, there was an end on't, but he wouldn't get much change out of Anderby. He'd a deal better stay there and amuse Mary, who must be dull sometimes. She was looking better already since he had come.
But David went.
Mary, drawing the curtains that night, thought of David and wondered if they had aired his sheets at the Flying Fox. His cold wasn't nearly well.
Poor boy! He cared so intensely for such silly things. Life was never kind to people who cared as much as that.
If it was land they cared for, it denied them heirs; if it was ideas, it proved them false.
Of course some people never wanted anything very much. Like John. She could never imagine John eating out his heart in longing for the unattainable. He was safe enough, securely fenced in behind his limitations. But David—David who believed in such stupid things that were bound to let him down one day, David who was such a child, who needed so much some one who could help him when the inevitable hour of disappointment came—what was one to do for him?
If John had been like David she would have watched and protected him. If John had been like David ... If David had been John....
She snapped the fastener down decisively.
There were some things that it was wiser not to think about.