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 the individual to assert his will against the will of the State.”

For some time they continued the argument, and then the intervals between one statement and the next became longer and longer, and they spoke more speculatively and less pugnaciously, and at last fell silent. Katharine went over the argument in her mind, remembering how, now and then, it had been set conspicuously on the right course by some remark offered either by James or by Johnnie.

“Your brothers are very clever,” she said. “I suppose you're in the habit of arguing?”

“James and Johnnie will go on like that for hours,” Ralph replied. “So will Hester, if you start her upon Elizabethan dramatists.”

“And the little girl with the pigtail?”

“Molly? She’s only ten. But they’re always arguing among themselves.”

He was immensely pleased by Katharine’s praise of his brothers and sisters. He would have liked to go on telling her about them, but he checked himself.

“I see that it must be difficult to leave them.” Katharine continued. His deep pride in his family was more evident to him, at that moment, than ever before, and the idea of living alone in a cottage was ridiculous. All that brotherhood and sisterhood, and a common childhood in a common past mean, all the stability, the unambitious comradeship, and tacit understanding of family life at its best, came to his mind, and he thought of them as a company, of which he was the leader, bound on a difficult, dreary, but glorious voyage. And it was Katharine who had opened his eyes to this, he thought.

A little dry chirp from the corner of the room now roused her attention.

“My tame rook,” he explained briefly. “A cat had bitten one of its legs.” She looked at the rook, and her eyes went from one object to another.