"Not a very good light."
"No," said Karl sourly and indifferently, bent over the stone, and breathing with calm regularity. "My eyesight is being de-stroit."
Behind, a young man in a smock was industriously polishing a stone.
Edwin beheld with pleasure. It was a joy to think that here was the sole lithography in Bursley, and that his own enterprise had started it. Nevertheless he was ashamed too,--ashamed of his hesitations, his half-measures, his timidity, and of Karl's impaired eyesight. There was no reason why he should not build a proper works, and every reason why he should; the operation would be remunerative; it would set an example; it would increase his prestige. He grew resolute. On the day of the party at the Benbows' he had been and carefully inspected the plot of land at Shawport, and yesterday he had made a very low offer for it. If the offer was refused, he would raise it. He swore to himself he would have his works.
Then Big James came into the litho room.
"I was seeking ye, sir," said Big James majestically, with a mysterious expression.
Edwin tried to look at him anew, as it were with Hilda's eyes. Certainly his bigness amounted now to an enormity, for proportionately his girth more than matched his excessive height. His apron descended from the semicircle of his paunch like a vast grey wall. The apron was dirty, this being Saturday, but it was at any rate intact; in old days Big James and others at critical moments of machining used to tear strips off their aprons for machine-rags.... Yes, he was conceivably a grotesque figure, with his spectacles, which did not suit him, his heavy breathing, his mannerisms, and his grandiose air of Atlas supporting the moral world. A woman might be excused for seeing the comic side of him. But surely he was honest and loyal. Surely he was not the adder that Hilda with an intonation had suggested!
"I'm coming," said Edwin, rather curtly.
He felt just in the humour for putting Big James "straight." Still his reply had not been too curt, for to his staff he was the opposite of a bully; he always scorned to take a facile advantage of his power, often tried even to conceal his power in the fiction that the employee was one man and himself merely another. He would be far more devastating to his wife and his sister than to any employee. But at intervals a bad or careless workman had to meet the blaze of his eye and accept the lash of his speech.
"It's about that little job for the mistress, sir," said Big James in a soft voice, when they were out on the landing.