"We didn't get to that," he said. "We were talking about Rose. Who do you think she is, Osmond?"
"Yes, but what more? She's the daughter of Markham MacLeod."
He was watching Osmond narrowly, to weigh the effect of the name. But Osmond's face kept its impressive interest.
"Yes, oh, yes! But that doesn't mean anything to me. Nothing does until I see the man. He works with too big a brush. He is an agitator. He may be Christ or Anti-Christ, but he's an agitator. That's all I know. I can't give a snap judgment of a man that gets whole governments into a huff and knows how to lead a rabble a million strong. So he's her father?"
Peter, unreasonably irritated, pitched upon one word for a cause of war.
"Rabble? What do you mean by that? Labor?"
Osmond smiled broadly and showed his white teeth.
"I'm labor myself," he said. "You know that, boy."
"Then what do you want to talk so for? Rabble!"
"I only meant it in relation to numbers," said Osmond, again irritatingly, in his indifference to all interests outside his dear boy's home-coming. "I'll make it a rabble of kings, if you say so. Folks, Peter, that's what I mean, folks. He deals with them in the mass. That makes me nervous. I can't like it."
"He believes in the equality of man," Peter announced, as he was conscious, rather swellingly. "The downfall of kings, the freedom of the individual."
"There's the _pot-au-feu_ smoking inside that shack," said Osmond, indicating a shanty across the field. "Come and have dinner with labor."
"I can't, Osmond," he said. "I've brought this girl into the house, and I've got to see her through. Won't you come up to-night?"
"Not till your Parisian has gone over to Electra's. You come down here. Come down about dusk and we'll have another go."
As Peter hurried back, conscious of being a little late, he could have beaten his head against the locust trees for the stupidity of his home-coming. He had the shattered moment with Electra to remember, and now he had turned the other great meeting of the day into a fractious colloquy. Unformed yet vivid in his mind, for the last year, had been strong, determining anticipations of what would happen when he at last came home. He had known certainly what would happen when he saw Electra. She would still be the loveliest and best, and his would be the privilege of telling her so. And to Osmond, who had dug in the ground that Peter might work under the eye of men, he would return as one who has an account to give, and say, in effect, "You did it." But, laughably, neither of these things had happened. He forgot that he had in him the beginnings of a great painter in remembering that he had shown the obtuseness of an ass.