at any time, and I had not saved anything, I should still not be left destitute to face the prospect of a bleak and impoverished old age; and I could not help a weak pleasure in the thought that a certain relative security was being guaranteed to those people of the working classes who had never had it before.  At the same moment I quite saw that to a prouder and stronger heart it must indeed be bitter to have to sit still under your own security, and even more bitter to have to watch that pauperising security coming closer and closer to others—­for the generous soul is always more concerned for others than for himself.  No doubt, I thought, if truth were known, my distant relative is consumed with longing to change places with that loafer who tried to open the door of my cab—­for surely he must see, as I do, that that is just what he himself—­having failed to stand the pressure of competition in his life—­would be doing if it were not for the accident of his birth, which has so lamentably insured him against coming to that.

“Yes,” I thought, “you have learnt something to-day; it does not do, you see, hastily to despise those distant relatives of yours, who talk about pauperising and molly-coddling the lower classes.  No, no!  One must look deeper than that!  One must have generosity!”

And with that I stopped the cab and got out for I wanted a breath of air. 1911

THE BLACK GODMOTHER

Sitting out on the lawn at tea with our friend and his retriever, we had been discussing those massacres of the helpless which had of late occurred, and wondering that they should have been committed by the soldiery of so civilised a State, when, in a momentary pause of our astonishment, our friend, who had been listening in silence, crumpling the drooping soft ear of his dog, looked up and said, “The cause of atrocities is generally the violence of Fear.  Panic’s at the back of most crimes and follies.”

Knowing that his philosophical statements were always the result of concrete instance, and that he would not tell us what that instance was if we asked him—­such being his nature—­we were careful not to agree.

He gave us a look out of those eyes of his, so like the eyes of a mild
eagle, and said abruptly:  “What do you say to this, then?.....  I was out
in the dog-days last year with this fellow of mine, looking for Osmunda,
and stayed some days in a village—­never mind the name.  Coming back one
evening from my tramp, I saw some boys stoning a mealy-coloured dog.   I
went up and told the young devils to stop it.   They only looked at me in
the injured way boys do, and one of them called out, ‘It’s mad, guv’nor!’
I told them to clear off, and they took to their heels.   The dog followed
me.   It was a young, leggy, mild looking mongrel, cross—­I should
say—­between a brown retriever and an Irish terrier.   There was froth
about its lips, and its eyes were watery; it looked indeed as if it might