Once or twice, as they paced the Terrace, George glanced sidelong at his leader. A corner of Fontenoy's nightly letter to Mrs. Allison was, he saw, sticking out of the great man's coat-pocket. Every night he wrote a crowded sheet upon his knee, under the shelter of a Blue Book, and on one or two nights George's quick eyes had not been able to escape from the pencilled address on the envelope to which it was ultimately consigned. The sheet was written with the regularity and devotion of a Prime Minister reporting to the Sovereign.
Well! it was all very touching and very remarkable. But George had some sympathy with Ancoats. To be virtually saddled with a stepfather, with whom your minutest affairs are confidentially discussed, and yet to have it said by all the world that your poor mother is too unselfish and too devoted to her son to marry again—the situation is not without its pricks. And that Ancoats was acutely conscious of them George had good reason to know.
"I say, Tressady, will you pair till eleven?" cried a man, swinging bareheaded along the Terrace with his hat in his hand. "I want an hour or two off badly, and there will be no big guns on till eleven or so."
George exchanged a word or two with Fontenoy, then stood still, and thought a moment. A sudden animation flushed into his face. Why not?
"All right!" he said; "till eleven."
Then he and Fontenoy went back to dine. As they mounted the dark staircase leading from the Terrace another man caught Tressady by the arm.
"The strike notices are out," he said. "I have just had a wire. Everyone leaves work to-night."
George shrugged his shoulders. He had been expecting the news at any moment, and was glad that the long shilly-shallying on both sides was at last over.
"Good luck to them!" he said. "I'm glad. The fight had to come."
"Oh! we shall be in the middle of arbitration before a fortnight's up.
The men won't stand."