"Oh, yes! They ought to give it me," then added rather suddenly: "You never know, though. People are so funny!" And crossing his thin legs, he went on to tell me, with quaint impersonality, a number of instances of how people had been funny in connection with jobs he had not been given. "You see," he ended, "the country's in such a state--capital going out of it every day. Enterprise being killed all over the place. There's practically nothing to be had!" "Ah!" I said, "you think it's worse, then, than it used to be?" He smiled; in that smile there was a shade of patronage. "We're going down-hill as fast as ever we can. National character's losing all its backbone. No wonder, with all this molly-coddling going on!" "Oh!" I murmured, "molly-coddling? Isn't that excessive?" "Well! Look at the way everything's being done for them! The working classes are losing their self-respect as fast as ever they can. Their independence is gone already!" "You think?" "Sure of it! I'll give you an instance----" and he went on to describe to me the degeneracy of certain working men employed by his aunt and his eldest brother Claud and his youngest brother Alan. "They don't do a stroke more than they're obliged," he ended; "they know jolly well they've got their Unions, and their pensions, and this Insurance, to fall back on." It was evidently a subject on which he felt strongly. "Yes," he muttered, "the nation is being rotted down." And a faint thrill of surprise passed through me. For the affairs of the nation moved him so much more strongly than his own. His voice already had a different ring, his eyes a different look. He eagerly leaned forward, and his long, straight backbone looked longer and straighter than ever. He was less the ghost of a man. A faint flush even had come into his pale cheeks, and he moved his well-kept hands emphatically. "Oh, yes!" he said: "The country is going to the dogs, right enough; but you can't get them to see it. They go on sapping and sapping the independence of the people. If the working man's to be looked after, whatever he does--what on earth's to become of his go, and foresight, and perseverance?" In his rising voice a certain piquancy was left to its accent of the ruling class by that faint twang, which came, I remembered, from some slight defect in his tonsils. "Mark my words! So long as we're on these lines, we shall do nothing. It's going against evolution. They say Darwin's getting old-fashioned; all I know is, he's good enough for me. Competition is the only thing." "But competition," I said, "is bitter cruel, and some people can't stand against it!" And I looked at him rather hard: "Do you object to putting any sort of floor under the feet of people like that?" He let his voice drop a little, as if in deference to my scruples.