“Naturally? It’s your property, Rupert.”
“Then that settles it. We’ll get some one to run us up a cottage on the Edge quite quickly. Really a cottage, I mean. I shall be working as a workman and I ought to live as one. I shan’t do that, but it won’t be a mansion pretending to be a cottage.”
“Well!” said Gertrude. “A cottage on the Edge!”
“We have to grow, Rupert and I,” said Mary. “We aren’t big enough for the Hall yet.”
“I feel about a quarter of an inch high, uncle, when I think of those mills... those thousands of men.”
“Oh, the workpeople,” said Gertrude, putting them in their place. “Your uncle tells me some of them dared to hiss.”
“Yes, I want to talk to you about that, uncle.”
William shuffled in his chair. “Not very nice of them, was it?”
“Impertinents,” said Gertrude. “They ought to be locked up.”
Rupert stared at her. If this was the attitude of the Hall, he thought, no wonder there had been a show of resentment. But it was only Gertrude’s attitude. “Would you also lock up,” said William, “the very many who did a deadlier thing than hissing? The men who stayed away, the men who went home ignoring Rupert altogether? We’d have to close the mills for lack of labor.”