them through his palish hair--"'the Land!' Heavenly Father! 'The Land!'
Why! Look at that fellow!"

Nedda looked and saw a man, like Richard Coeur de Lion in the history
books, with a straw-colored moustache just going gray.

"Sir Gerald Malloring--hope he's not a friend of yours! Divine right of
landowners to lead 'the Land' by the nose! And our friend Britto!"

Nedda, following his eyes, saw a robust, quick-eyed man with a suave
insolence in his dark, clean-shaved face.

"Because at heart he's just a supercilious ruffian, too cold-blooded
to feel, he'll demonstrate that it's no use to feel--waste of valuable
time--ha! valuable!--to act in any direction. And that's a man they
believe things of. And poor Henry Wiltram, with his pathetic: 'Grow our
own food--maximum use of the land as food-producer, and let the rest
take care of itself!' As if we weren't all long past that feeble
individualism; as if in these days of world markets the land didn't
stand or fall in this country as a breeding-ground of health and stamina
and nothing else. Well, well!"

"Aren't they really in earnest, then?" asked Nedda timidly.

"Miss Freeland, this land question is a perfect tragedy. Bar one or two,
they all want to make the omelette without breaking eggs; well, by the
time they begin to think of breaking them, mark me--there'll be no eggs
to break. We shall be all park and suburb. The real men on the land,
what few are left, are dumb and helpless; and these fellows here for
one reason or another don't mean business--they'll talk and tinker and