‘Wait a little while,’ said Mr. Thornton.  ’Remember, we are of a different race from the Greeks, to whom beauty was everything, and to whom Mr. Bell might speak of a life of leisure and serene enjoyment, much of which entered in through their outward senses.  I don’t mean to despise them, any more than I would ape them.  But I belong to Teutonic blood; it is little mingled in this part of England to what it is in others; we retain much of their language; we retain more of their spirit; we do not look upon life as a time for enjoyment, but as a time for action and exertion.  Our glory and our beauty arise out of our inward strength, which makes us victorious over material resistance, and over greater difficulties still.  We are Teutonic up here in Darkshire in another way.  We hate to have laws made for us at a distance.  We wish people would allow us to right ourselves, instead of continually meddling, with their imperfect legislation.  We stand up for self-government, and oppose centralisation.’

’In short, you would like the Heptarchy back again.  Well, at any rate, I revoke what I said this morning—­that you Milton people did not reverence the past.  You are regular worshippers of Thor.’

’If we do not reverence the past as you do in Oxford, it is because we want something which can apply to the present more directly.  It is fine when the study of the past leads to a prophecy of the future.  But to men groping in new circumstances, it would be finer if the words of experience could direct us how to act in what concerns us most intimately and immediately; which is full of difficulties that must be encountered; and upon the mode in which they are met and conquered—­not merely pushed aside for the time—­depends our future.  Out of the wisdom of the past, help us over the present.  But no!  People can speak of Utopia much more easily than of the next day’s duty; and yet when that duty is all done by others, who so ready to cry, “Fie, for shame!"’

’And all this time I don’t see what you are talking about.  Would you Milton men condescend to send up your to-day’s difficulty to Oxford?  You have not tried us yet.’

Mr. Thornton laughed outright at this.  ’I believe I was talking with reference to a good deal that has been troubling us of late; I was thinking of the strikes we have gone through, which are troublesome and injurious things enough, as I am finding to my cost.  And yet this last strike, under which I am smarting, has been respectable.’

‘A respectable strike!’ said Mr. Bell.  ’That sounds as if you were far gone in the worship of Thor.’

Margaret felt, rather than saw, that Mr. Thornton was chagrined by the repeated turning into jest of what he was feeling as very serious.  She tried to change the conversation from a subject about which one party cared little, while, to the other, it was deeply, because personally, interesting.  She forced herself to say something.