A Life's Secret: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

'They'll last out as long as I want 'em to, I dare say,' said Sam. 'Have you come up for anything particular, Darby?'

'I have come to talk a bit, Shuck,' answered Darby, inwardly shrinking from his task, and so deferring for a minute the announcement. 'There seems no chance of this state of things coming to an end.'

'No, that there doesn't. You men are preventing that.'—'Us men!' exclaimed Robert Darby in surprise. 'What do you mean?'

'I don't mean you; I don't mean the sturdy, honest fellows who hold out for their rights like men—I mean the other lot. If every operative in the kingdom had held out, to a man, the masters would have given in long ago—they must have done it; and you would all be back, working in triumph the nine hours per day. I spoke of those rats who sneak in, and take the work, to the detriment of the honest man.'

'At any rate, the rats are getting the best of it just now,' said Robert Darby.

'That they are,' said Mrs. Quale, exultingly, who would not lose an opportunity of putting in her word. She stood facing the men, her arms resting on the palings that divided the gardens. 'It isn't their children that are dropping into their winding-sheets through want of food.'

'If I had my way, I'd hang every man who in this crisis is putting his hand to a stroke of work,' exclaimed Sam Shuck. 'Traitors! to turn and work for the masters after they had resorted to a lock-out! It was that lock-out floored us.'

'Of course it was,' assented Mrs. Quale, with marked complaisance. 'If the Union only had money coming in from the men, they'd hold out for ever. But the general lock-out stopped that.'

'Ugh!' growled Sam, with the addition of an ugly word.