“It’s better, and does its work cleaner,” grumbled the man sullenly; and he gave his superior a morose look from under his shaggy brows.
“I don’t care if it’s a hundred times better. Go and blast the block down with powder, as it always has been done, I tell you again. I want my men; and there’s no trusting that other stuff, or they’re not fit to be trusted with it. Now go, and don’t come here again without being summoned.”
“Too grand for the likes o’ me, eh, Master Gartram?”
“Will you have the goodness to recollect that you are speaking to a gentleman, sir?”
“I’m speaking to another man, I being a man,” said Woodham sturdily. “I don’t know nothing about no gentlemen. I’m speaking to Norman Gartram, quarry-owner, who lives here in riches and idleness upon what we poor slaves have made for him by the sweat of our brows.”
“What does this mean?” cried the old man. “Have you turned Socialist?”
“I’ve turned nowt. But as a Christian man I warn you, Norman Gartram, that for all your fine house and your bags of money, and company and purple and fine linen, ‘the Lord gave, and the Lord taketh away.’”
“You—”
“There, I’m going to do my work honest, master, and earn my wages.”
“And blast that granite down with powder, sir.”