"What things?" Grace had asked, suspiciously.
Lily hesitated.
"Well, a sort of Socialism, for one thing, only it isn't exactly that. It's individualism, really, or I think so; the sort of thing that this house stifles." Grace was too horrified for speech. "I don't want to hurt you, mother, but don't you see? He tyrannizes over all of us, and it's bad for our souls. Why should he bellow at the servants? Or talk to you the way he did to-night?" She smiled faintly. "We're all drowning, and I want to swim, that's all. Mr. Doyle--"
"You are talking nonsense," said Grace sharply. "You have got a lot of ideas from that wretched house, and now you think they are your own. Lily, I warn you, if you insist on going back to the Doyles I shall take you abroad."
Lily turned and walked out of the room, and there was something suggestive of old Anthony in the pitch of her shoulders. Her anger did not last long, but her uneasiness persisted. Already she knew that she was older in many ways than Grace; she had matured in the past year more than her mother in twenty, and she felt rather like a woman obeying the mandates of a child.
But on that pleasant Monday she was determined to be happy.
"Old world begins to look pretty, doesn't it?" said Pink, breaking in on her thoughts.
"Lovely."
"It's not a bad place to live in, after all," said Pink, trying to cheer his own rather unhappy humor. "There is always spring to expect, when we get low in winter. And there are horses and dogs, and--and blossoms on the trees, and all that." What he meant was, "If there isn't love."
"You are perfectly satisfied with things just as they are, aren't you?" Lily asked, half enviously.
"Well, I'd change some things." He stopped. He wasn't going to go round sighing like a furnace. "But it's a pretty good sort of place. I'm for it."
"Have you sent your ponies out?"
"Only two. I want to show you one I bought from the Government almost for nothing. Remount man piped me off. Light in flesh, rather, but fast. Handy, light mouth--all he needs is a bit of training."
They had been in the open country for some time, but now they were approaching the Cardew's Friendship plant. The furnaces had covered the fields with a thin deposit of reddish ore dust. Such blighted grass as grew had already lost its fresh green, and the trees showed stunted blossoms. The one oasis of freshness was the polo field itself, carefully irrigated by underground pipes. The field, with its stables and grandstand, had been the gift of Anthony Cardew, thereby promoting much discussion with his son. For Howard had wanted the land for certain purposes of his own, to build a clubhouse for the men at the plant, with a baseball field. Finding his father obdurate in that, he had urged that the field be thrown open to the men and their families, save immediately preceding and during the polo season. But he had failed there, too. Anthony Cardew had insisted, and with some reason, that to use the grounds for band concerts and baseball games, for picnics and playgrounds, would ruin the turf for its legitimate purpose.