“Here is Temple coming in with tea. He is the only indoor servant we keep now,” and Lionel instinctively came forward to help him to arrange the tea-table. Temple, instead of retiring, dallied with the cups and saucers. There was something in the valet’s mind, but he did not know how to put it into words.
“Now, Temple, there’s something you want to say. What is it?” Gwen turned gracefully on to her side and poured out tea.
“Yes, my lady; and as you are so kind as to allow me, I shall speak. It’s about the groom, Wiggles, my lord.”
“What about him?” asked Lionel. “He cannot surely complain that he receives no wages? We none of us get any wages nowadays.”
“Ah! it isn’t that, my lord. But the children have been ailing for years, and now that the factories in which the eldest ones worked are closed, they would like to go back to the country. But Wiggles doesn’t want you to think he is complaining. He only wants a whiff of fresh air, and he asked me to beg your lordship’s advice.”
“Good gracious! there was a time when Wiggles would not have taken such trouble to give me notice.”
“It isn’t that he wishes to give notice, my lord;—I don’t know how to put it, nor does Wiggles. He wants, I think, to see his old people before they die.”
“My poor Temple, Wiggles is like many others who have suddenly seen life as it is, and not as it had been made for him. We also are now able to see things as they are. We see that if Wiggles’s rooms in his mews are too small and dingy for him and his family, our rooms here are too spacious for us. But very soon we shall make it all even.”
“I can’t imagine how Lionel can be such a fool as to speak to his valet like that,” whispered Mrs Archibald to Sinclair; “they want a good squashing, these people.”
“Tell Wiggles to pack up!—ha! ha! ha! I forgot—he has nothing to pack up. Let him go back to his own village. Rural life is dying out, and we want to relieve the congestion of our capital, and bring life and happiness into the apathetic provinces.—We must give back the land!”