Oliver, aged but thirteen, assented, as he habitually did to any
question which seemed to await an affirmative.

'They ought to be swept off the face of the earth!' pursued Godwin,
sitting up in bed--for the dialogue took place about eleven
o'clock at night. 'All the grown-up creatures, who can't speak
proper English and don't know how to behave themselves, I'd
transport them to the Falkland Islands,'--this geographic
precision was a note of the boy's mind,--'and let them die off as
soon as possible. The children should be sent to school and
purified, if possible; if not, they too should be got rid of.'

'You're an aristocrat, Godwin,' remarked Oliver, simply; for the
elder brother had of late been telling him fearful stories from the
French Revolution, with something of an anti-popular bias.

'I hope I am. I mean to be, that's certain. There's nothing I hate
like vulgarity. That's why I can't stand Roper. When he beat me in
mathematics last midsummer, I felt so ashamed I could hardly bear
myself. I'm working like a nigger at algebra and Euclid this half,
just because I think it would almost kill me to be beaten again by a
low cad.'

This was perhaps the first time that Godwin found expression for the
prejudice which affected all his thoughts and feelings. It relieved
him to have spoken thus; henceforth he had become clear as to his
point of view. By dubbing him aristocrat, Oliver had flattered him
in the subtlest way. If indeed the title were justly his, as he
instantly felt it was, the inference was plain that he must be an
aristocrat of nature's own making--one of the few highly favoured