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“It doesn’t seem so to me,” I said. “They have to eat.”

“Oh, do they?” he said. “You can eat merely because you have to, can you? Suppose there wasn’t anything to eat?”

He was turning away, with his feathers up, as if he had carried the argument. But I detained him.

“All right,” I said. “There is not enough work but plenty to eat. We’ll suppose it. What does that prove?”

Eyeing me intently, with some new interest, he hesitated, not as to what he would say but as to whether he should bother to say it.

“It proves,” he said, “that the country is rich. Nobody knows it. Nobody will believe it. The country is so rich that people may actually live without work.”

“That’s an interesting point of view,” I said. “Who are you?”

“Nobody,” he replied, with an oblique sneer. “A member of the Stock Exchange.”

“Oh!” I said, before I could catch it. And not to leave the conversation in that lurch I asked: “Do you know who those two men were who wrangled in the smoking compartment?”

“Editors,” he replied, cynically. “The younger one was Godkin of the Post. I’ve forgotten the other one’s name. Silly magpies! Pol-i-t-i-c-s, hell!”