"What next?" he asked patiently. It was difficult to portray his pet theories with becoming dignity when at any moment Mary might fill his arms with yards of linen, or send him on to his knees after a strayed cotton reel.
"Next you put the two pieces together like this—no, not that end, the other, and then I sew them up the middle. You see, Mr. Rossitur, my point is that Anderby has been pretty much the same for four hundred years, and I don't see how talk is going to alter it. When it comes to that, I don't see it wants altering. That idea of small holdings you were talking about may do all right in some places, but, believe me, it's absurd on farms where you grow wheat and rear sheep."
She took a pin from the sheet and placed it between her teeth, then removed it to give greater emphasis to her statement.
"It's so stupid to unsettle something that's quite happy as it is just because of a silly theory."
"But they're not happy here, and it isn't silly."
"Of course you don't think so—just put some more coal on the fire please—I've heard all that before. You've got heaps of statistics, but you confessed yourself just now they were nearly all drawn up in the last century. Don't you see how behind the times you are? Because fifty years ago the labourers were underpaid, it doesn't mean they're not all right to-day. Just you wait till your cold's quite better, and you can have a look at my people in Anderby."
"It's not I who am behind the times, Mrs. Robson, it's you," he responded hotly. "You've just acknowledged the evils of a benevolent despotism, and now you deny that your rule is a despotism because it's benevolent. Why, what hope is there for social stability when the happiness of men is a matter of philanthropy, not of right? If you and Mr. Robson were rotters, Anderby wouldn't be fit to live in."
Mary bent over her sewing-machine, and the wheel span with amazing rapidity. David regarded her across the table. She was maddening, with her amused complacency, her indifference to all his arguments. And yet kind, and intelligent too in a way, and not without a sense of social responsibility. Clearly a convert worth making. He started again.
"You think you're a queen because you govern this village and your subjects seem to like you. The only real kings and queens are those who stand above their generation and rule circumstance."
Mary looked up and smiled indulgently.