Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/70

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THE NEW ARCADIA.

plained Elms apologetically; "but he's not as ferocious as he talks."

"Nor as he looks," interjected the daughter, eyeing the mangled chicken with a smile.

"And what do you read?" inquired the young man, turning to Gwyneth with growing interest.

"Oh, I suppose penny-dreadfuls, Scraps and Answers," she replied with a laugh, not caring to parade her literary tastes.

"Nothing of the kind, sir," interjected her father. "She's been all through my books on Political Economy. She's great on history, and is now reading aloud to us of evenings the Greater Britain. Her mother was a great reader before her."

"Then you'll be interested in the agricultural communities of America—'Riverside,' 'Oneida,' 'Utah,' and the others. I have been visiting them lately." The young man proceeded to describe phases of social life, as he had observed them in America. "If you do as well as those settlers, you'll be all bloated capitalists in a few years."

"Won't it be fun to see Dick living on the interest of his interest!" said the girl, mischievously.

"Not if I knows it," said Dick, savagely; "I'll be a Knight of Labour to the end of the chapter."

"You'd be the most overbearing and selfish capitalist ever demagogue denounced," continued Gwyneth. "You know you would, Dick, if you ever possessed the opportunity. It is bourgeois bloomed into millionaire that makes the hardest-shelled capitalist. We'll see Dick in the Upper House yet, with a knighthood."

The young man looked as if he could devour the girl, with love or hate, as he replied, with feeling—

"At least, I'll not make slaves of the people, to be