POST SCRIPTUM.
Grey Town after many years, and Grey Town in the early summer, when the farmers were congratulating themselves on fat factory cheques. But a changed Grey Town, for prosperity had transformed the town. It was no longer merely a country centre for a pastoral and agricultural district, but a busy industrial town, where the manufacturing interests were as important as the farming interests; where every morning a stream of workers flowed from the outside suburbs into the town; where there was bustle and noise and confusion; where money circulated freely; where men grew rich and proud in the power of their money bags. A happier Grey Town? Perhaps not quite so contented as the lazy, easy-going, and self-satisfied Grey Town, as Denis Quirk had found it, for here comparative poverty stood side by side with riches, and suffered in the contrast.
Prosperity had come to the town on sound lines, thanks to Denis Quirk. He had provided that riches should not be accumulated in Grey Town at the expense of suffering and discomfort to the poor. It was thanks to him, so the Grey Towners said, that the factory area was separated from the residential portion of the town. They also hinted in Grey Town that he was largely responsible for the Government Bill, compelling landlords to provide their tenants with sufficient space for a garden and yard of greater extent than one might swing a cat in. There were others in it, Grey Town acknowledged that; but their Member, their Denis Quirk, was the prime mover.
He was rich now, and happy, but I may safely say that no poor man paused beside his gate to hurl a curse at the oppressor of the unfortunate. He still had enemies—his determined and combative nature made that unavoidable—but his enemies were of those who had been prevented from exploiting the poor by his agency. These termed him an enemy to progress, their notions of progress being summed up in self-progress. And they vowed that "that demagogue Quirk" should go out when the country recovered its mental equilibrium, lost for the time in an absurd humanitarianism. He was in his garden, sitting on a garden seat, with a book in his hand, but work had been declared an insult by the two rosy rogues, a boy and a girl, by the way, who had escaped from Nurse, now vainly seeking them in the house. Kathleen was beside her husband, watching in an amused manner the subservience of the master of men to the children.
Kathleen, the elder, was a copy of her mother; Denis, the boy, promised to be as good as his father; singly, they were powerful; united, as to-day, they were irresistible. And they had decided that "Daddy" must play a game with them, and the game should be hide and seek.
"Hide 'oo eyes and count," said Kathleen, junior, in a compelling voice.
"But Daddy wants to read," expostulated Mother, in a tone of entreaty.