“Then what do you want to talk economics for?  Or is it done like that nowadays?”

“I don’t want to,” answered Eddie, almost in a wail. “She does.  She gets me going and then we quarrel because she has terrible opinions.  She talks wildly.  I have to point out to her that she’s wrong.  And last night she told me”—­Eddie glanced about to be sure he was not overheard—­“she told me that she was a socialist.”

Mr. Cord had just lit the very cigar which Eddie had waved away, and he took the first critical puffs at it before he answered: 

“Did you ask her what that was?”

“No—­no—­I didn’t.”

“Missed a trick there, Eddie.”

It was impossible to accuse so masklike a magnate of frivolity, but Eddie was often dissatisfied with Mr. Cord’s reactions to the serious problems of life.

“But don’t you think it’s terrible,” he went on, eagerly, “for Crystal to be a socialist?  In this age of the world—­civilization trembling on the brink—­chaos”—­Eddie made a gesture toward the perfectly ordered shelves containing Poor’s Manual—­“staring us in the face?  You say that the half-baked opinions of an immature girl make no difference?”

“No, I shouldn’t say that—­at least not to Crystal,” murmured her father.

“But the mere fact that she picks up such ideas proves that they are in the air about us and that terrifies me—­terrifies me,” ended Eddie, his voice rising as he saw that his host intended to remain perfectly calm.

“Which terrifies you, Eddie—­Crystal or the revolution?”

“The general discontent—­the fact that civilization is tr—­”

“Oh yes, that,” said Mr. Cord, hastily.  “Well, I wouldn’t allow that to terrify me, Eddie.  I should have more sympathy with you if it had been Crystal.  Crystal is a good deal of a proposition, I grant you.  The revolution seems to me simpler.  If a majority of our fellow countrymen really want it, they are going to get it in spite of you and me; and if they don’t want it, they won’t have it no matter how Crystal talks to you at parties.  So cheer up, Eddie, and have a cigar.”

“They can, they will,” said Eddie, not even troubling to wave away the cigar this time.  “You don’t appreciate what an organized minority of foreign agitators can do in this country.  Why, they can—­”

“Well, if a minority of foreigners can put over a revolution against the will of the American people, we ought to shut up shop, Eddie.”

“You’re not afraid?”

“No.”

“You mean you wouldn’t fight it?”

“You bet your life I’d fight it,” said Mr. Cord, gayly, “but I fight lots of things without being afraid of them.  What’s the use of being afraid?  Here I am sixty-five, conservative and trained to only one game, and yet I feel as if I could manage to make my own way even under soviet rule.  Anyway, I don’t want to die or emigrate just because my country changes its form of government.  Only it would have to be the wish of the majority, and I don’t believe it ever will be.  In the meantime there is just one thing I am afraid of—­and that’s the thing that you and most of my friends want to do first—­suppressing free speech; if you suppress it, we won’t know who wants what.  Then you really do get an explosion.”