much for nothing—votes and free this, that
and the other—that they don’t value
it in the least. They’re dependent all the
time. What you want to help them to is independence,
pride in themselves and confidence in themselves—that
sort of independence. You know, all this talk
that they put up, or that’s put up for them,
about their right to this and their right to that—of
course you can’t have a right to anything without
earning it. That’s what they want to be
shown, see? And that’s what they want to
be given—the chance to earn the right to
things, see? Well, this Insurance Act business—”
She laughed again. “I was beginning to
wonder if you were ever coming back to that.”
He noticed nothing deprecatory in her remark.
“Yes, rather. Well, this Insurance Act
business—that’s really a jolly good
example of the way to do things. You see, it’s
not giving them the right to free treatment when they’re
ill; it’s giving them the chance to earn the
right. That’s what you want to explain
to High and Low. See—you want to say
to them, ’This is your show. Your very
own. Fine. You’re building this up,
I’m helping. You’re helping all sorts
of poor devils and you’re helping yourself at
the same time. You’re stacking up a great
chunk of the State and it belongs to you. England’s
yours and you want to pile it up all you know’—”
“That’s the sort of thing I’m putting
into that book of mine. ’England’s
yours’, you know. Precious beyond price;
and therefore grand to be making more precious and
more your own. I wish you’d like to see
how the book’s getting on; would you?”
“Why ‘England.’ I told you,
you know. That history.”
“Oh, that lesson book! I wish you’d
write a novel.”
He looked at her. “Oh, well!” he
said.
After that he never mentioned “England”
again to her. But he most desperately wanted
to talk about it to some one. There was no one
in Penny Green from whom he could expect helpful suggestions;
but it was not helpful suggestions he wanted.
He wanted merely to talk about it to a sympathetic
listener. And not only about the book,—about
all sorts of things that interested him. And
indirectly they all helped the book. To talk
with one who responded sympathetically was in some
curious way a source of enormous inspiration to him.
Not always precisely inspiration,—comfort.
All sorts of warming feelings stirred pleasurably
within him when he could, in some sympathetic company,
open out his mind.
He was not actively aware of it, but what, in those
years, he came to crave for as a starved child craves
for food was sympathy of mind.
He found it, in Penny Green, with what Mabel called
“the most extraordinary people.”
“What you can find in that Mr. Fargus and that
young Perch and his everlasting mother,” she
used to say, “I simply cannot imagine.”
