“It’s hard after you’ve had a shop. You see all the younger men’ve come on. They know the new ways. And a man who’s had a shop and failed, he’s lost heart. And these stores setting up make everything drivinger. They do things a different way. They make it harder for everyone.”
Both Lady Harman and Susan Burnet reflected in silence for a few seconds upon the International Stores. The sewing woman was the first to speak.
“Things like that,” she said, “didn’t ought to be. One shop didn’t ought to be allowed to set out to ruin another. It isn’t fair trading, it’s a sort of murder. It oughtn’t to be allowed. How was father to know?...”
“There’s got to be competition,” said Lady Harman.
“I don’t call that competition,” said Susan Burnet.
“But,—I suppose they give people cheaper bread.”
“They do for a time. Then when they’ve killed you they do what they like.... Luke—he’s one of those who’ll say anything—well, he used to say it was a regular Monopoly. But it’s hard on people who’ve set out to live honest and respectable and bring up a family plain and decent to be pushed out of the way like that.”
“I suppose it is,” said Lady Harman.
“What was father to do?” said Susan, and turned to Sir Isaac’s armchair from which this discourse had distracted her.
And then suddenly, in a voice thick with rage, she burst out: “And then Alice must needs go and take their money. That’s what sticks in my throat.”