Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/56

 would or wouldn't. Don't leave your shirt-tail hanging out, with a theoretically. Would you or wouldn't you."

Somers laughed.

"Why, yes, I would," he said, "and be damned to everything."

"Shake," cried Jack, stretching over. And he took Somers' small hand between both his own. "I knew," he said in a broken voice, "that we was mates."

Somers was rather bewildered.

"But you know," he said, ""I never take any part in politics at all. They aren't my affair."

"They're not! They're not! You're quite right. You're quite right, you are. You're a damned sight too good to be mixing up in any dirty politics. But all I want is that your feelings should be the same as mine, and they are, thank my stars, they are."

By this time Somers was almost scared.

"But why should you care?" he said, with some reserve. The other however did not heed him.

"You're not with the middle classes, as you call them, the money-men, as I call them, and I know you're not. And if you're not with them you're against them."

"My father was a working-man. I come from the working people. My sympathy is with them, when it's with anybody, I assure you."

Jack stared at Somers wide-eyed, a smile gathering round his mouth.

"Your father was a working-man, was he? Is that really so? Well, that is a surprise! And yet," he changed his tone, "no, it isn't. I might have known. Of course I might. How should I have felt for you as I did, the very first minute I saw you, if it hadn't been so. Of course you're one of us: same flesh and blood, same clay. Only you've had the advantages of a money-man. But you've stuck true to your flesh and blood, which is what most of them don't do. They turn into so much dirt, like the washings in the pan, a lot of dirt to a very little gold.  Well, well, and your father was a working man! And you now being as you are! Wonderful what we may be, isn't it?"

"It is indeed," said Somers, who was infinitely more amazed at the present Jack, than ever Jack could be at him.