Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/51

 "Me? I wanted to hear what you have to say."

"And I'd rather hear what you have to say," laughed Somers.

There was a pause. Jack seemed to be pondering. At last he came out with his bluff, manly Australian self.

"If you ask me," he said, "I should say that Labour is the bogey you speak of."

Again Somers knew that this was a draw. "He wants to find out if I'm socialist or anti," he thought to himself.

"You think Labour is a menace to society?" he returned.

"Well," Jack hedged. "I won't say that Labour is the menace, exactly. Perhaps the state of affairs forces Labour to be the menace."

"Oh, quite. But what's the state of affairs?"

"That's what nobody seems to know."

"So it's quite safe to lay the blame on," laughed Somers. He looked with real dislike at the other man, who sat silent and piqued and rather diminished: "Coming here just to draw me and get to know what's inside me!" he said to himself angrily. And he would carry the conversation no further. He would not even offer Jack a whisky and soda. "No," he thought to himself. "If he trespasses on my hospitality, coming creeping in here, into my house, just to draw me and get the better of me, underhandedly, then I'll pour no drink for him. He can go back to where he came from." But Somers was mistaken. He only didn't understand Jack's way of leaving seven-tenths of himself out of any intercourse. Richard wanted the whole man there, openly. And Jack wanted his own way, of seven-tenths left out.

So that after a while Jack rose slowly, saying:

"Well, I'll be turning in. It's work to-morrow for some of us."

"If we're lucky enough to have jobs," laughed Somers.

"Or luckier still, to have the money so that we don't need a job," returned Jack.

"Think how bored most folks would be on a little money and no settled occupation," said Somers.

"Yes, I might be myself," said Jack, honestly admitting it, and at the same time slightly despising the man who had no job, and therefore no significance in life.