And they were the coming manhood of the nation--this inexpressibly distasteful lot of youths! The country had indeed got too far away from 'the Land.' And this essential towny commonness was not confined to the classes from which these youths were drawn.

He had even remarked it among his own son's school and college friends--an impatience of discipline, an insensibility to everything but excitement and having a good time, a permanent mental indigestion due to a permanent diet of tit-bits.

What aspiration they possessed seemed devoted to securing for themselves the plums of official or industrial life.

His boy Alan, even, was infected, in spite of home influences and the atmosphere of art in which he had been so sedulously soaked.

He wished to enter his Uncle Stanley's plough works, seeing in it a 'soft thing.' But the last of the woman-baiters had passed by now, and, conscious that he was really behind time, Felix hurried on....
In his study--a pleasant room, if rather tidy--John Freeland was standing before the fire smoking a pipe and looking thoughtfully at nothing.