What that had to do with the land problem or the regulation of village morality Malloring had been unable to perceive.  It all depended on what one was accustomed to; and in any case threw no light on the question, as to whether or not he was to tolerate on his estate conduct of which his wife and himself distinctly disapproved.  At the back of national life there was always this problem of individual conduct, especially sexual conduct—­without regularity in which, the family, as the unit of national life, was gravely threatened, to put it on the lowest ground.  And he did not see how to bring it home to the villagers that they had got to be regular, without making examples now and then.

He had hoped very much to get through his call without coming across Freeland’s wife and children, and was greatly relieved to find Tod, seated on a window-sill in front of his cottage, smoking, and gazing apparently at nothing.  In taking the other corner of the window-sill, the thought passed through his mind that Freeland was really a very fine-looking fellow.  Tod was, indeed, about Malloring’s own height of six feet one, with the same fairness and straight build of figure and feature.  But Tod’s head was round and massive, his hair crisp and uncut; Malloring’s head long and narrow, his hair smooth and close-cropped.  Tod’s eyes, blue and deep-set, seemed fixed on the horizon, Malloring’s, blue and deep-set, on the nearest thing they could light on.  Tod smiled, as it were, without knowing; Malloring seemed to know what he was smiling at almost too well.  It was comforting, however, that Freeland was as shy and silent as himself, for this produced a feeling that there could not be any real difference between their points of view.  Perceiving at last that if he did not speak they would continue sitting there dumb till it was time for him to go, Malloring said: 

“Look here, Freeland; about my wife and yours and Tryst and the Gaunts, and all the rest of it!  It’s a pity, isn’t it?  This is a small place, you know.  What’s your own feeling?”

Tod answered: 

“A man has only one life.”

Malloring was a little puzzled.

“In this world.  I don’t follow.”

“Live and let live.”

A part of Malloring undoubtedly responded to that curt saying, a part of him as strongly rebelled against it; and which impulse he was going to follow was not at first patent.

“You see, you keep apart,” he said at last.  “You couldn’t say that so easily if you had, like us, to take up the position in which we find ourselves.”

“Why take it up?”

Malloring frowned.  “How would things go on?”

“All right,” said Tod.

Malloring got up from the sill.  This was ‘laisser-faire’ with a vengeance!  Such philosophy had always seemed to him to savor dangerously of anarchism.  And yet twenty years’ experience as a neighbor had shown him that Tod was in himself perhaps the most harmless person in Worcestershire, and held in a curious esteem by most of the people about.  He was puzzled, and sat down again.