“But which is it to me?”

“Ah! that you’ve got to find out for yourself.  There’s a sort of metronome inside us—­wonderful, sell-adjusting little machine; most delicate bit of mechanism in the world—­people call it conscience—­that records the proper beat of our tempos.  I guess that’s all we have to go by.”

Nedda said breathlessly: 

“Yes; and it’s frightfully hard, isn’t it?”

“Exactly,” Mr. Cuthcott answered.  “That’s why people devised religions and other ways of having the thing done second-hand.  We all object to trouble and responsibility if we can possibly avoid it.  Where do you live?”

“In Hampstead.”

“Your father must be a stand-by, isn’t he?”

“Oh, yes; Dad’s splendid; only, you see, I am a good deal younger than he.  There was just one thing I was going to ask you.  Are these very Bigwigs?”

Mr. Cuthcott turned to the room and let his screwed-up glance wander.  He looked just then particularly as if he were going to bite.

“If you take ’em at their own valuation:  Yes.  If at the country’s:  So-so.  If at mine:  Ha!  I know what you’d like to ask:  Should I be a Bigwig in their estimation?  Not I!  As you knock about, Miss Freeland, you’ll find out one thing—­all bigwiggery is founded on:  Scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.  Seriously, these are only tenpenny ones; but the mischief is, that in the matter of ‘the Land,’ the men who really are in earnest are precious scarce.  Nothing short of a rising such as there was in 1832 would make the land question real, even for the moment.  Not that I want to see one—­God forbid!  Those poor doomed devils were treated worse than dogs, and would be again.”

Before Nedda could pour out questions about the rising in 1832, Stanley’s voice said: 

“Cuthcott, I want to introduce you!”

Her new friend screwed his eyes up tighter and, muttering something, put out his hand to her.

“Thank you for our talk.  I hope we shall meet again.  Any time you want to know anything—­I’ll be only too glad.  Good night!”

She felt the squeeze of his hand, warm and dry, but rather soft, as of a man who uses a pen too much; saw him following her uncle across the room, with his shoulders a little hunched, as if preparing to inflict, and ward off, blows.  And with the thought:  ’He must be jolly when he gives them one!’ she turned once more to the darkness, than which he had said there was nothing nicer.  It smelled of new-mown grass, was full of little shiverings of leaves, and all colored like the bloom of a black grape.  And her heart felt soothed.

CHAPTER IX