Do you know where the boots came from that shod
the troops in South Africa? Cawnpore. The money will go,
you know, and that's a fact; the money will go, and the
people will go, anyhow. It's only a case of whether
England sends them with blessing and profit and greater
glory, or whether she lets them slip away in spite of
her."
"I dare say it will," replied Hesketh; "I've got precious
little, but what there is I'd take out fast enough, if
I saw a decent chance of investing it. I sometimes think
of trying my luck in the States. Two or three fellows in
my year went over there and aren't making half a bad
thing of it."
"Oh, come," said Lorne, half-swinging round upon the
other, with his hands in his pockets, "it isn't exactly
the time, is it, to talk about chucking the Empire?"
"Well, no, it isn't," Hesketh admitted. "One might do
better to wait, I dare say. At all events, till we see
what the country says to Wallingham."
They walked on for a moment or two in silence; then Lorne
broke out again.
"I suppose it's unreasonable, but there's nothing I hate
so much as to hear Englishmen talk of settling in the
United States."
"It's risky, I admit. And I've never heard anybody yet
say it was comfortable."
"In a few years, fifty maybe, it won't matter. Things
will have taken their direction by then; but now it's a
question of the lead.
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