``You own both
sides. So, it's heads you win, tails I lose.''
Hastings laughed heartily. ``Them political fellows are a lot of
blackmailers,'' said he.
``That's ungrateful,'' said Charlton. ``Still, I don't blame you
for liking the Davy Hull crowd better. From them you can get
what you want just the same, only you don't have to pay for it.''
He rose and stretched his big frame, with a disregard of
conventional good manners so unconscious that it was inoffensive.
But Charlton had a code of manners of his own, and somehow it
seemed to suit him where the conventional code would have made
him seem cheap. ``I didn't mean to look after your political
welfare, too,'' said he. ``But I'll make no charge for that.''
``Oh, I like to hear you young fellows talk,'' said Martin.
``You'll sing a different song when you're as old as I am and
have found out what a lot of damn fools the human race is.''
``As I told you before,'' said Charlton, ``it's conditions that
make the human animal whatever it is. It's in the harness of
conditions--the treadmill of conditions-- the straight jacket of
conditions. Change the conditions and you change the animal.''
When he was swinging his big powerful form across the lawns
toward the fringe of woods, Jane and her father looking after
him, Jane said:
``He's wonderfully clever, isn't he?''
``A dreamer--a crank,'' replied the old man.
``But what he says sounds reasonable,'' suggested the daughter.
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