‘Gra’ mercy! as we used to say, for thy prophecies and predictions. I see no necessity for vice being necessarily allied to success in life. I believe sometimes it is rather the other way. But you were always headstrong; slave to imagination, that misleader of humanity. Go on your own path, and you may convert all the Papuans, Australians, New Zealanders, or whatever they are, that you are going to waste your life among, if you have sufficient breathing time before you are roasted.’ ‘I am going to New South Wales, in Australia, where they don’t roast people any more than in Bucks. But you will never read up on any subject.’ ‘Why the deuce should I?’ demanded the senior. ‘What earthly benefit can I derive from the manners and customs of foreign savages. We have them of our own and to spare. If thereby I could persuade these pig-headed tenants of ours to farm in a more enlightened way, and pay interest on capital advanced for _their_ benefit, or learn how to get old Sir Giles Windereach to sell us back that corner his father bought of Slacklyne Neuchamp, I wouldn’t mind. Why else should I read beastly dry books?’ ‘Because you would learn to take an interest in your kind, and might then propose to yourself the healthful task of trying to improve them.’ ‘But,’ said Courtenay, rather disrespectfully, ‘why should I improve those classes, from which as a land-owner and very minor capitalist, I find it hard enough to defend my property as it is? Go and test a grocer in arithmetic, you will find him the more accurate man, and the readier. Try a labourer at his own cart, and see how he is at once your superior. Depend upon it, all this upheaval of lower social strata is bad. Some day we may find that we have freed internal fires and exploded social volcanoes.’ ‘I shall make the attempt where I am going, however,’ said Ernest with decision. ‘It may be that there are peculiar advantages in a new land, and a sparse population, without the crushing vested interests which weigh one to the dust in the old world.’ ‘Perhaps you may gather some of the dust of the new, which is gold, they say, if they don’t lie, as most probably they do. Then you can rear an Australian Neuchampstead, which will be the third, under such conditions, built by our family, if old records are true. I wish you were taking more capital with you, old fellow, though.’ Here the elder man slightly relaxed the cold undemonstrative regard which his aquiline features usually wore, as he gazed for a few moments upon the ardent expressive face of the cadet of his house. ‘It’s another of the family faults that we can neither stay decently together at home, nor fit out our knights-errant worthily for the crusade.’