He was
still under his father's roof, but that was for the
general happiness; any time within the last eighteen
months, if he had chosen to hurry fate, he might have
selected another. He was younger than Hesketh by a year,
yet we may say that he had arrived, while Hesketh was
still fidgeting at the starting-point.
"Why don't you farm?" he asked once.
"Farming in England may pay in a quarter of a century,
not before. I can't wait for it. Besides, why should I
farm? Why didn't you?"
"Well," said Lorne, "in your case it seems about the only
thing left. I? Oh it doesn't attract us over there. We're
getting away from it--leaving it to the newcomers from
this side. Curious circle, that: I wonder when our place
gets overcrowded, where we shall go to plough?"
Hesketh's situation occupied them a good deal; but their
great topic had a wider drift, embracing nothing less
than the Empire, pausing nowhere short of the flag. The
imperial idea was very much at the moment in the public
mind; it hung heavily, like a banner, in every newspaper,
it was filtering through the slow British consciousness,
solidifying as it travelled. In the end it might be
expected to arrive at a shape in which the British
consciousness must either assimilate it or cast it forth.
They were saying in the suburbs that they wanted it
explained; at Hatfield they were saying, some of them,
with folded arms, that it was self evident; other members
of that great house, swinging their arms, called it
blackness of darkness and ruin, so had a prophet divided
it against itself.
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