trained movements, their pleasant consideration
for each other."

"Kindly, good tempered, and at bottom utterly selfish," she said, "like
big, rather carefully trained, rather pampered children. What else can
you expect from them?"

"They are good tempered, anyhow," I witnessed, "and that's an
achievement. I don't think I could ever be content under a bad-tempered,
sentimentalism, strenuous Government. That's why I couldn't stand the
Roosevelt REGIME in America. One's chief surprise when one comes across
these big people for the first time is their admirable easiness and
a real personal modesty. I confess I admire them. Oh! I like them.
I wouldn't at all mind, I believe, giving over the country to this
aristocracy--given SOMETHING--"

"Which they haven't got."

"Which they haven't got--or they'd be the finest sort of people in the
world."

"That something?" she inquired.

"I don't know. I've been puzzling my wits to know. They've done all
sorts of things--"

"That's Lord Wrassleton," she interrupted, "whose leg was broken--you
remember?--at Spion Kop."

"It's healed very well. I like the gold lace and the white glove
resting, with quite a nice awkwardness, on the sword. When I was a
little boy I wanted to wear clothes like that. And the stars! He's got
the V. C. Most of these people here have at any rate shown pluck, you
know--brought something off."

"Not quite enough," she suggested.

"I think that's it," I said. "Not quite enough--not quite hard enough,"
I added.

She laughed and looked at me. "You'd like to make us," she said.

"What?"

"Hard."

"I don't think you'll go on if you don't get hard."

"We shan't be so pleasant if we do."

"Well, there my puzzled wits come in again. I don't see why an
aristocracy shouldn't be rather hard trained, and yet kindly. I'm not
convinced that the resources of education are exhausted. I want to
better this, because it already looks so good."

"How are we to do it?" asked Mrs. Redmondson.

"Oh, there you have me! I've been spending my time lately in trying to
answer that! It makes me quarrel with"--I held up my fingers and ticked
the items off--"the public schools, the private tutors, the army exams,
the Universities, the Church, the general attitude of the country
towards science and literature--"

"We all do," said Mrs. Redmondson. "We can't begin again at the
beginning," she added.

"Couldn't one," I nodded at the assembly in general, start a moveme