He had been listening with a grave face, for he had his pride, and did not relish his nephew's being hand and glove with his base-born brother and sister.
“Don't you, father? Where's your socialism? I'm only trying to carry it out.”
“Out and away, my boy, as Samson did the gates in my mother's old bible!” answered John.
“If a man's socialism don't apply to his own flesh and blood,” resumed Richard, “where on earth is it to begin? Must you hate your own flesh, and go to Russia or China for somebody to be fair to? Ain't your own got as good a right to fair play as any, and ain't they the readiest to begin with? Is it selfish to help your own? It ain't the way you've done by me, uncle!”
“You mustn't forget,” said John, “that a grave wrong is done the nation when marriage is treated with disrespect.”
“It was my father did that! Was it Alice and Arthur that broke the marriage-law by being born out of wedlock?”
“If you treat them like other people, you slight that law.”
“If sir Wilton Lestrange were to come into the room this minute, you would offer him a chair; his children you would order out of the house!”
“I wouldn't do that,” said Mrs. Tuke.
“Mother, you turned them out of the house!—I beg your pardon, mother, but you know it was the same thing! You visited the sins of the father on the children!”