too fast."

What was it in this girl that reminded him of that one with whom he had
lived but two years, and mourned fifteen? Was it her youth? Was it
that quick way of lifting her eyes, and looking at him with such clear
directness? Or the way her hair grew? Or what?

"Do you like the people here, Uncle John?"

The question caught John, as it were, between wind and water. Indeed,
all her queries seemed to be trying to incite him to those wide efforts
of mind which bring into use the philosophic nerve; and it was long
since he had generalized afresh about either things or people, having
fallen for many years past into the habit of reaching his opinions down
out of some pigeonhole or other. To generalize was a youthful practice
that one took off as one takes certain garments off babies when they
come to years of discretion. But since he seemed to be in for it, he
answered rather shortly: "Not at all."

Nedda sighed again.

"Nor do I. They make me ashamed of myself."

John, whose dislike of the Bigwigs was that of the dogged worker of this
life for the dogged talkers, wrinkled his brows:

"How's that?"

"They make me feel as if I were part of something heavy sitting on
something else, and all the time talking about how to make things
lighter for the thing it's sitting on."

A vague recollection of somebody--some writer, a dangerous one--having
said something of this sort flitted through John.

"Do YOU think England is done for, Uncle--I mean about 'the Land'?"

In spite of his conviction that 'the country was in a bad way,' John
was deeply, intimately shocked by that simple little question. Done
for! Never! Whatever might be happening underneath, there must be no
confession of that. No! the country would keep its form. The country
would breathe through its nose, even if it did lose the race. It must
never know, or let others know, even if it were beaten. And he said:

"What on earth put that into your head?"

"Only that it seems funny, if we're getting richer and richer, and
yet all the time farther and farther away from the life that every one
agrees is the best for health and happiness. Father put it into my head,
making me look at the little, towny people in Transham this afternoon. I
know I mean to begin at once to learn about farm work."

"You?" This pretty young thing with the dark head and the pale, slim
shoulders! Farm work! Women were certainly getting queer. In his
department he had almost dail