, one. What you call the beefy set aren't a set at all. They're
just the rowing people, and naturally they chiefly see each other; but
they're always nice to me or to any one. Of course, they think us rather
asses, but it's quite in a pleasant way."

"That's my whole objection," said Ansell. "What right have they to
think us asses in a pleasant way? Why don't they hate us? What right has
Hornblower to smack me on the back when I've been rude to him?"

"Well, what right have you to be rude to him?"

"Because I hate him. You think it is so splendid to hate no one. I tell
you it is a crime. You want to love every one equally, and that's worse
than impossible it's wrong. When you denounce sets, you're really trying
to destroy friendship."

"I maintain," said Rickie--it was a verb he clung to, in the hope that
it would lend stability to what followed--"I maintain that one can like
many more people than one supposes."

"And I maintain that you hate many more people than you pretend."

"I hate no one," he exclaimed with extraordinary vehemence, and the dell
re-echoed that it hated no one.

"We are obliged to believe you," said Widdrington, smiling a little "but
we are sorry about it."

"Not even your father?" asked Ansell.

Rickie was silent.

"Not even your father?"

The cloud above extended a great promontory across the sun. It only lay
there for a moment, yet that was enough to summon the lurking coldness
from the earth.

"Does he hate his father?" said Widdrington, who had not known. "Oh,
good!"

"But his father's dead. He will say it doesn't count."

"Still, it's something. Do you hate yours?"

Ansell did not reply. Rickie said: "I say, I wonder whether one ought to
talk like this?"

"About hating dead people?"

"Yes--"

"Did you hate your mother?" asked Widdrington.

Rickie turned crimson.

"I don't see Hornblower's such a rotter," remarked the other man, whose
name was James.

"James, you are diplomatic," said Ansell. "You are trying to tide over
an awkward moment. You can go."

Widdrington was crimson too. In his wish to be sprightly he had used
words without thinking of their meanings. Suddenly he realized that
"father" and "mother" really meant father and mother--people whom he had
himself at home. He was very uncomfortable, and thought Rickie had been
rather queer. He too tried to revert to Hornblower, but Ansell would not
let him. The sun came out, and struck on the white ramparts of t