The doctors, on the other hand, were beginning to possess little cars of their own which they drove themselves or had driven for them; while the progressive Town Council started motor buses and deprived Alf of some station-work. Mr. Pigott, now a radical alderman, was responsible for this last injustice.
Alf knew it, and in revenge, ceased to attend chapel.
Mr. Pigott, with an unerring eye for the defaulters of his flock, marked his absence and tackled the lost sheep on the subject.
"You've given up God then!" he said, fierce and frowning.
"There ain't none," answered Alf, as brief and brutal. "Where there's no justice, there can't be no God." His little eyes sparkled dreadfully. "Look at young Albert Hewson. He went through the shops with me. Is he as good an engineer as me?—Can he strip an engine same as me?—Can he turn to the thousandth part of an inch?—Ask the chaps in the yard. Yet because he's got all the money, been to Rugby and Oxford, they make him deputy-chairman of the Red Cross Syndicate at £1,000 a year straight from the shop, and Managing Director of Ball-Bearings, Limited, and I don't know what all."
He became a violent Socialist; spent his Sundays attending Labour demonstrations in the East-end; read Robert Blatchford in the Clarion; and sulked with his mother.
For a moment he even contemplated the abandonment of his ambitions.
When Mr. Pigott, after his second marriage, finally gave up schoolmastering and became Manager of the Southdown Transport Company, Alf applied for the position of working foreman.
The application was discussed at a meeting of the Directors.
"He's the chap that made the wage-slave speech to the Engineers at the Salvation Army Citadel on Labour Day," said one.