“It’s not much to be offering a gentleman like yourself,” he said, “but it’s the best we have, and seeing that you’ll be here all night and best part of to-morrow you’ll be wanting something to eat.”
Sir James gasped with astonishment.
“Here all night!” he said. “Why should we be here all night? Has the engine broken down?”
“It has not,” said the driver.
“Then you must go on,” said Sir James. “I insist on your going on at once.”
The driver poured out a cup of tea and handed it to Sir James. Then he sat down and began to talk in a friendly way.
“Sure, I can’t go on,” he said, “when I’m out on strike.”
Sir James was so startled that he upset a good deal of tea. As Head of the Ministry of Strikes he naturally had great experience, but he had never before heard of a solitary engine driver going on strike in the middle of a bog.
“The way of it is this,” the driver went on. “It was giv out, by them that does be managing things that there was to be a general strike on the first of next month. You might have heard of that, for it was in all the papers.”
Sir James had heard of it. It was the subject of many notes and reports in his Ministry.