Grace said nothing. Her eyes sought Howard's, and seemed to find some comfort there. And Lily, sorry for her mother, said the first thing that came into her head.
"The old days of caste are gone, grandfather. And service, in your sense of the word, went with them."
"Really?" he eyed her. "Who said that? Because I daresay it is not original."
"A man I knew at camp."
"What man?"
"His name was Willy Cameron."
"Willy Cameron! Was this--er--person qualified to speak? Does he know anything about what he chooses to call caste?"
"He thinks a lot about things."
"A little less thinking and more working wouldn't hurt the country any," observed old Anthony. He bent forward. "As my granddaughter, and the last of the Cardews," he said, "I have a certain interest in the sources of your political opinions. They will probably, like your father's, differ from mine. You may not know that your father has not only opinions, but ambitions." She saw Grace stiffen, and Howard's warning glance at her. But she saw, too, the look in her mother's eyes, infinitely loving and compassionate. "Dear little mother," she thought, "he is her baby, really. Not I."
She felt a vague stirring of what married love at its best must be for a woman, its strange complex of passion and maternity. She wondered if it would ever come to her. She rather thought not. But she was also conscious of a new attitude among the three at the table, her mother's tense watchfulness, her father's slightly squared shoulders, and across from her her grandfather, fingering the stem of his wineglass and faintly smiling.
"It's time somebody went into city politics for some purpose other than graft," said Howard. "I am going to run for mayor, Lily. I probably won't get it."
"You can see," said old Anthony, "why I am interested in your views, or perhaps I should say, in Willy Cameron's. Does your father's passion for uplift, for instance, extend to you?"
"Why won't you be elected, father?"
"Partly because my name is Cardew."
Old Anthony chuckled.
"What!" he exclaimed, "after the bath-house and gymnasium you have built at the mill? And the laundries for the women--which I believe they do not use. Surely, Howard, you would not accuse the dear people of ingratitude?"
"They are beginning to use them, sir." Howard, in his forties, still addressed his father as "Sir!"