“They’ll do well to ca’ canny,” said John Murchison.

“There’s two things in the way, at a glance,” Lorne went on.  “The conservatism of the people—­it isn’t a name, it’s a fact—­the hostility and suspicion; natural enough:  they know they’re stupid, and they half suspect they’re fair game.  I suppose the Americans have taught them that.  Slow—­oh, slow!  More interested in the back-garden fence than anything else.  Pick up a paper, at the moment when things are being done, mind, all over the world, done against them—­when their shipping is being captured, and their industries destroyed, and their goods undersold beneath their very noses—­and the thing they want to know is—­Why Are the Swallows Late?  I read it myself, in a ha’penny morning paper, too—­that they think rather dangerously go-ahead—­a whole column, headed, to inquire what’s the matter with the swallows.  The Times the same week had a useful leader on Alterations in the Church Service, and a special contribution on Prayers for the Dead.  Lord, they need ’em!  Those are the things they think about!  The session’s nearly over, and there’s two Church Discipline Bills, and five Church Bills—­bishoprics and benefices, and Lord knows what—­still to get through.  Lot of anxiety about ’em, apparently!  As to a business view of politics, I expect the climate’s against it.  They’ll see over a thing—­they’re fond of doing that—­or under it, or round one side of it, but they don’t seem to have any way of seeing through it.  What they just love is a good round catchword; they’ve only got to hear themselves say it often enough, and they’ll take it for gospel.  They’re convinced out of their own mouths.  There was the driver of a bus I used to ride on pretty often, and if he felt like talking, he’d always begin, ’As I was a-saying of yesterday—­’ Well, that’s the general idea—­to repeat what they were a-sayin’ of yesterday; and it doesn’t matter two cents that the rest of the world has changed the subject.  They’ve been a-sayin’ a long time that they object to import duties of any sort or kind, and you won’t get them to see the business in changing.  If they do this it won’t be because they want to, it will be because Wallingham wants them to.”

“I guess that’s so,” said Williams.  “And if Wallingham gets them to he ought to have a statue in every capital in the Empire.  He will, too.  Good cigar this, Lorne!  Where’d you get it?”

“They are Indian cheroots—­’Planters,’ they call ’em—­made in Madras.  I got some through a man named Hesketh, who has friends out there, at a price you wouldn’t believe for as decent a smoke.  You can’t buy ’em in London; but you will all right, and here, too, as soon as we’ve got the sense to favour British-grown tobacco.”

“Lorne appreciates his family better than he did before,” remarked his youngest sister, “because we’re British grown.”

“You were saying you noticed two things specially in the way?” said his father.