“Yes; he can’t think of more than one thing at a time, Jordan can’t. I’m just a machine now, like the typewriter. I told him yesterday I didn’t hold with some of his opinions about labour, and he couldn’t have been more surprised if the typewriter had spoken to him.” “I shouldn’t argue about his views if I was you, Medora. They’re his life, in a manner of speaking.” “I shall argue about ’em if I choose. He’d think no better of me if I humbly said ditto to all he says. He goes a lot too far, and he’d take the shirts off the backs of the rich, if he could. He reads it over and over, and I very near stamp sometimes. Nothing will ever make me a socialist now. I dare say I might have been if he’d gone about it different; but now now. And, anyway, I’m not going to be the echo to Jordan, just because he takes it for granted I must be.” “He’s found a house, he tells me.” “He has, but he wants to beat down the rent a bit. He’s afraid of his life that Dingle’s going to have his savings out of him.” “That’s as may be. I dare say he’ll do no such thing. It wouldn’t be like Ned.” “Life’s properly dreadful for me—that’s all I know about it.” “I dare say it is. You’ve got to wait the will of other people now, Medora; and it’s a thing you never much liked doing.” “But I’m not friendless—I’m not friendless,” she said fiercely. “To hear Jordan talk, you’d think he’s the only thing that stands between me and the streets; and I won’t have it. People don’t hate me—not all of them. But you’d imagine that, without Jordan, there’d be no place on earth for me now.” “I thought he was very gentle and proper in his treatment,” said Mrs. Trivett. “I can’t explain. I only mean that he seems to think that if it wasn’t for his watchful care, and coming between me and every wind that blows, I’d be torn to pieces by my fellow creatures. And what about him? If I did wrong, what about him?” “It’s rather late in the day to talk like that.” “I want him to see all the same that I’m not a lone, friendless, outcast creature, without anyone to care for me. I don’t like to be championed by him, as if I was a fallen woman, and he was a saint. I won’t have it, I tell you. I’m not a fallen woman any more than he’s a fallen man, and I want him to know the world isn’t against me any more than it’s against him.” Lydia was surprised. “This all seems silly nonsense to me,” she said. “If you had anything to do, you’d not waste time worrying over things like that.”