of England at the moment. He's safe on
the yacht. He can't be got at. There's some wretched predatory woman of
title pursuing him...."

"Here ... here!" cried Jenny. "I can't understand if you talk
pidgin-English, Keith."

"Well ... you know what ravenous means? Hungry. And a woman of
title--you know what a lord is.... Well, and she's chasing about,
dropping little scented notes at every street corner for him."

"Oh they are _awful_!" cried Jenny. "Countesses! Always in the divorce
court, or something. Somebody ought to stop them. They don't have
countesses in America, do they? Why don't we have a republic, and get
rid of them all? If they'd got the floor to scrub they wouldn't have
time to do anything wrong."

"True," said Keith. "True. D'you like scrubbing floors?"

"No. But I do it. And keep my hands nice, too." The hands were inspected
and approved.

"But then you're more free than most people," Keith presently remarked,
in a tone of envy.

"Free!" exclaimed Jenny. "Me! In the millinery! When I've got to be
there every morning at nine sharp or get the sack, and often, busy
times, stick at it till eight or later, for a few bob a week. And never
have any time to myself except when I'm tired out! Who gets the fun?
Why, it's _all_ work, for people like me; all work for somebody else.
What d'you call being free? Aren't they free?"

"Not one. They're all tied up. Templecombe's hawk couldn't come on this
yacht without a troop of friends. They can't go anywhere they like
unless it's 'the thing' to be done. They do everything because it's the
right thing--because if they do something else people will think it's
odd--think they're odd. And they can't stand that!"

"Well, but Keith! Who is it that's free?"

"Nobody," he said.

"I thought perhaps it was only poor people ... just _because_ they were
poor."

"Well, Jenny.... That's so. But when people needn't do what they're told
they invent a system that turns them into slaves. They have a religion,
or they run like the Gadarine swine into a fine old lather and pretend
that everybody's got to do the same for some reason or other. They call
it the herd instinct, and all sorts of names. But there's nobody who's
really free. Most of them don't want to be. If they were free they
wouldn't know what to do. If their chains were off they'd fall down and
die. They wouldn't be happy if there wasn't a system grinding them as
much like each other as it can."

"But why not