Leven grinned in the background. Bennett lay back in his chair with a worried look. Wilkins's crudities were very distasteful to him both in and out of the House. The younger of the Socialist workmen, a mason, with a strong square face, incongruously lit somehow with the eyes of the religious dreamer, looked at Wilkins contemptuously.
"There's none of you in the House will take orders," he said quickly, "and that's the ruin of us. We all know that. Where do you think we'd have been in the struggle with the employers, if we'd gone about our business as you're going about yours in the House of Commons?"
"I'm not saying we shouldn't organise," said Wilkins, fiercely. "What I'm sayin' is, get a man of the working class—a man who has the wants of the working class—a man whom the working class can get a hold on—to do your business for you, and not any bloodsucking landlord or capitalist. It's a slap i' the face to ivery honest working man i' the coontry, to mak' a Labour party and put Harry Wharton at t' head of it!"
The young Socialist looked at him askance. "Of course you'd like it yourself!" was what he was thinking. "But they'll take a man as can hold his own with the swells—and quite right too!"
"And if Mr. Wharton is a landlord he's a good sort!" exclaimed the shoemaker—a tall, lean man in a well-brushed frock coat. "There's many on us knows as have been to hear him speak, what he's tried to do about the land, and the co-operative farming. E's straight is Mr. Wharton. We 'aven't got Socialism yet—an' it isn't 'is fault bein' a landlord. Ee was born it."
"I tell tha he's playin' for his own hand!" said Wilkins, doggedly, the red spot deepening on his swarthy cheek—"he's runnin' that paper for his own hand—Haven't I had experience of him? I know it—And I'll prove it some day! He's one for featherin' his own nest is Mr. Wharton—and when he's doon it by makkin' fools of us, he'll leave us to whistle for any good we're iver likely to get out o' him. He go agen the landlords when it coom to the real toossle,—I know 'em—I tell tha—I know 'em!"
A woman's voice, clear and scornful, broke into the talk.
"It's a little strange to think, isn't it, that while we in London go on groaning and moaning about insanitary houses, and making our small attempts here and there, half of the country poor of England have been re-housed in our generation by these same landlords—no fuss about it—and rents for five-roomed cottages, somewhere about one and fourpence a week!"
Hallin swung his chair round and looked at the speaker—amazed!
Wilkins also stared at her under his eyebrows. He did not like women—least of all, ladies.