Page:Arthur Machen - The Hill of Dreams.djvu/71

THE HILL OF DREAMS compared, he thought, much to their advantage, with more complex civilisations. There was no hint of anything like the Beit system of publishing as in existence amongst them, the great Yahoo nation would surely never feed and encourage a scabby Houyhnhnm, expelled for his foulness from the horse-community, and the witty dean, in all his minuteness, had said nothing of 'safe' Yahoos. On reflection, however, he did not feel quite secure of this part of his defence; he remembered that the leading brutes had favourites, who were employed in certain simple domestic offices about their masters, and it seemed doubtful whether the contemplated vindication would not break down on this point. He smiled queerly to himself as he thought of these comparisons, but his heart burnt with a dull fury. Throwing back his unhappy memory, he recalled all the contempt and scorn he had suffered; as a boy he had heard the masters murmuring their disdain of him and of his desire to learn other than ordinary school work. As a young man he had suffered the insolence of these wretched people about him; their cackling laughter at his poverty jarred and grated in his ears, he saw the acrid grin of some miserable idiot woman, some 61