Fulner looked at her with pity. Christopher liked him better than ever.
“I’m afraid it’s true, Mrs. Lawrie, but Scott couldn’t help himself. Mr. Masters spotted the game when we were in the big engine-room. You go down 238 to the main gate and wait for Jim. Perhaps you’ll get him home safe if you take him the short cut, not this way.” He nodded his head towards the public house they had passed.
“It’s a shame,” broke out the woman wildly, but her sentences were overlaid with unwomanly words, “they all does it. I ask now, how’s we to get coal at all if we don’t get the leavings. Jim only does what they all does. What’s ’arf a pail of coal to ’im? I’d like to talk to ’un, I would. Jim will go mad again, and I’ve three of ’un now to think of, the brats.” She flung up her arms with a superbly helpless gesture and stumbled off down the road.
Christopher looked after her with a white face.
“What does it mean?” he asked.
“The men have a way of appropriating the remains of the last measure of coal they put on before going off duty. It’s wrong of course: it’s been going on for ages. I warned Scott—he’s the foreman. They’ve been complaining about the coal supply at headquarters. Mr. Masters caught Jim Lawrie at it to-day as we left the big engine-room.”
“Is it a first offence?”
“There’s no first offence here,” returned Fulner grimly. “There’s one only. There’s the club room. We have to pay £20 a year rent for the ground and then to keep it going.”
“But surely, Mr. Masters––” began Christopher and stopped.
“Mr. Masters has nothing to do with the place outside the works. It is not part of the System. He pays 6d. a head more than any other employer and that frees him. There’s the station.”