breathed about him now. But Jeffrey
did not pursue the dangerous road of too great candour. He veered, and
asked, as if that might settle a good many questions:

"What's the matter with this town, anyway?"

"Addington?" said Choate. "You find it changed?"

"Changed! I believe you. Addington used to be a perfect picture--like a
summer landscape--you know the kind. You walked into the picture the
minute you heard the name of Addington. It was full of nice trees and
had a stream and cows with yellow light on them. When you got into
Addington you could take a long breath."

For the first time in his talk with anybody since he came home Jeff was
feeling lubricated. He couldn't express himself carelessly to his
father, who took him with a pathetic seriousness, nor to the girls, to
whom he was that horribly uncomfortable effigy, a hero. But here was
another fellow who, he would have said, didn't care a hang, and Jeff
could talk to him.

"There's no such picture now," Alston assured him. "The Addington we
knew was Victorian."

"Yes. It hadn't changed in fifty years. What's it changing for now?"

"My dear boy," said Alston seriously, because he had got on one of his
own hobbies that he couldn't ride in Addington for fear of knocking
ladies off their legs, "don't you know what's changing the entire world?
It's the birth of compassion."

"Compassion?"

"Yes. Sympathy, ruth, pity. I looked up the synonyms the other day. But
we're at the crude, early stages of it, and it's devilish uncomfortable.
Everybody's so sorry for everybody that we can't tell the kitchen maid
to scour the knives without explaining."

Jeff was rather bewildered.

"Are we so compassionate as all that?" he asked.

"Not really. It's my impression most of us aren't compassionate at all."

"Amabel is."

"Oh, yes, Amabel and Francis of Assisi and a few others. But the rest of
us have caught the patter and it makes us 'feel good'. We wallow in it.
We feel warm and self-righteous--comfy, mother says, when she wants to
tuck me up at night same as she used to after I'd been in swimming and
got licked. Yes, we're compassionate and we feel comfy."

"But what's Weedon Moore got to do with it? Is Weedie compassionate?"

"Oh, Weedie's working Amabel and telling the mill hands they're great
fellows and very much abused and ought to own the earth. Weedie wants
their votes."

"Then Weedie is up for office? Amabel told me so, but I didn't think
Addington'd