“I thought yo were so taken wi’ the ways of the South country.”
“So I am,” said Margaret, smiling a little, as she found herself thus caught. “I only mean, Bessy, there’s good and bad in everything in this world; and as you felt the bad up here, I thought it was but fair you should know the bad down there.”
“And yo say they never strike down there?” asked Nicholas abruptly.
“No!” said Margaret; “I think they have too much sense.”
“An’ I think,” replied he, dashing the ashes out of his pipe with so much vehemence that it broke, “it’s not that they’ve too much sense, but that they’ve too little spirit.”
“Oh, father!” said Bessy, “what have ye gained by striking? Just think of that first strike when mother died—how we all had to clem—you the worst of all; and yet many a one went in every week at the same wage, till all were gone in that there was work for; and some went beggars all their lives at after.”
“Ay,” said he. “That there strike was badly managed. Folk got into th’ management of it, as were either fools or not true men. Yo’ll see, it’ll be different this time.”
“But all this time you’ve not told me what you’re striking for,” said Margaret, again.
“Why, yo see, there’s five or six masters who have set themselves again paying the wages they’ve been paying these two years past, and flourishing upon, and getting richer upon. And now they come to us, and say we’re to take less. And we won’t. We’ll just clem them to death first; and see who’ll work for ’em then. They’ll have killed the goose that laid ’em the golden eggs, I reckon.”
“And so you plan dying, in order to be revenged upon them!”