ONE:That summer the country was shaken by rumours of war, Reuben; having more leisure on his hands, spent it in the study of his daily paper. He could now read simple sentences, and considered himself quite an educated man. When war at last broke out in South Africa he was delighted. It was the best of all possible wars, organised by the best of all possible Governments, under the best of all possible ministers. Chamberlain became his heronot that he understood or sympathised with his Imperialism, but he admired him for his attitude towards the small nations. He hated all talk about preserving the weaksuch was not nature's way, the way of farms; there the weakest always went to the wall, and he could not see why different methods should obtain in the world at large. If Reuben had been a politician he would have kept alive no sick man of Europe, protected no down-trodden Balkan States. One of the chief reasons why he wanted to see the Boers wiped out was because they had muddled their colonisation, failed to establish themselves, or to make of the arid veldt what he had made of Boarzell.Both unconsciously dreaded the time when they should demand more of each otherwhen the occasional enlacing of their hands would no longer be enough to open Paradise, when from sweet looking and longing they would have to pass into the bitterness of action. Tilly, though essentially practical and determined, was enjoying her first visit to faery, and also inherited her mother's gift of languor. She basked in those hours of sun and bees. She, like her father, was passing for the first time into a life outside the dominion of the farmbut,[Pg 220] whereas he fought it, and sought it only to fight it, she submitted to it as to a caress.
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