Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/141

 -

things should not be allowed," said Slicker hotly.

"Unfortunately," said Dick, and his voice was proportionately cool, "we have learnt to conduct society on the assumption that each human thing is a separate individual. And therefore, logic requires that we allow to each at least the outward rights of personal independence."

"But they have no right to use those rights against another."

"You know Mrs. Hotchkiss says that bruise was where she fell against a tree, Slicker?" reproved young Forbes.

"But she knows it isn't. And so do we."

Along Leigh's warm, shady verandah the older men glanced at each other in amusement. Dick looked down on the two boys spread luxuriously on the sunny grass.

"Whose rights are you encroaching on now, Slicker?" he asked.

"Oh, it's all rot!" Slicker sat up with a jerk. "Love and marriage just upset the preconceived plan of the whole cosmos."

"Especially marriage," murmured Dick; while the other men laughed, stinging Slicker into defence.

"We ought to have been all men or all women," he cried. "All men wouldn't bother to bully each other, and all women wouldn't bother to nag each other. There wouldn't be much love, and so there wouldn't be much sorrow. We'd just jig along each on our own."

"Sounds enticing," said Bond, the young factor of Revillons. "But there seem to be some fundamental objections to that plan, Slicker. The world has to go on, you know. Or, at least, we are under that impression. We may be over-estimating our value."