art 3

The farthest thing from Merrill's thoughts had been to discuss with her
the confounded notions she had somehow absorbed. The thing to do, of
course, was to ignore them and assume everything was all right. After
all, of what importance were the opinions of a girl about practical
things?

How the thing cropped up he did not afterward remember, but at the
thirteenth green he found himself mentioning that all reformers were out
of touch with facts. They were not practical.

The smug finality of his verdict nettled her. This may or may not have
been the reason she sliced her ball, quite unnecessarily. But it was
probably due to her exasperation at the wasted stroke that she let him
have it.

"I'm tired of that word. It means to be suicidally selfish. There's not
another word in the language so abused."

"Didn't catch the word that annoys you," the young man smiled.

"Practical! You used it yourself. It means to tear down and not
build up, to be so near-sighted you can't see beyond your reach. Your
practical man is the least hopeful member of the community. He stands
only for material progress. His own, of course!"

"You sound like a Farnum editorial, Alice."

"Do I?" she flashed. "Then I'll give you the rest of it. He--your
practical man--is rutted to class traditions. This would not be good
form or respectable. That would disturb the existing order. So let's all
do nothing and agree that all's well with the world."

Merrill greeted this outburst with a complacent smile. "It's a pretty
good world. I haven't any fault to find with it--not this afternoon
anyhow."

But Alice, serious with young care and weighted with the problems of a
universe, would have none of his compliments.

"Can't you see that there's a--a--" She groped and found a fugitive
phrase Jeff had once used--"a want of adjustment that is appalling?"

"It doesn't appall me. I believe in the survival of the fittest."

Her eyes looked at him with scornful penetration. They went through the
well-dressed, broad-shouldered exterior of him, to see a suave,
gracious Pharisee of the modern world. He believed in the
God-of-things-as-they-are because he was the man on horseback. He was a
formalist because it paid him to be one. That was why he and his class
looked on any questioning of conditions as almost atheistic. They were
born to the good things of life. Why should they doubt the ethics of a
system that had dealt so kindly with them?

She gave