“That’s my business. Your business is to look after your men—that is, if you consider your responsibilities at all.”
“Please don’t apologise for teaching me my responsibilities,” said Ormond.
“Don’t mean to. Are you going to rope in Roddy, or are you not?”
Ormond blinked across at the other as he stood, straight and lean, in the door, with the rain on his yellow oil-skins, and his hard face grey with cold. Then he got up and spoke as no man of Randal’s birth had spoken to him these fifteen years. Father Denis clapped his fat hands on his knees.
“An’ ye’re all right, then, the pair ov ye. Thrust ye tu know a man when ye sees him, Ormond. Bring him along tu the fire; an’ shut the dure, for it’s cowld enough to freeze tin regimints on us. There’s a chair goin’ beggin’—ye’ll have whisky, Mr. Randal?”
Randal’s nerve forsook him. In the colonies no work is derogatory to a man unless he makes it so. He may clean pig-sties, and the friends of his college days will not forsake him; but to take the first step down the ladder which few climb again, must and does lose him touch with his class. This is the inexorable law. Randal was half-way down that ladder long since, and the fierce passion which swept Effie Scannell on its tide might never bear him up
