“Oh, ’e knows a bit, ’e does,” remarked another, sarcastically.
There was a longer pause, when the spokesman, who had been ruminating over the matter, said:
“Wot d’ ye s’y t’ ’avin another pint insoide? Then we go t’ th’ meetin’ and wote for th’ stroike. Larn ’im a lesson. I like ’is impidence, I do. Tork ’bout muddlin’; we’ll show ’oose muddled.”
This was unanimously agreed to as illuminating the situation. It is perhaps a pity that Marsten did not know the result of his brief conversation with his felow-workmen.
He was young and had to learn many things. He did not know that the desire for improving one’s condition is not at all universal, and that even where there may be the germ of a desire, people do not wish to be dragooned into bettering themselves. Tact, as Mrs. Hope might have told him, goes farther than good intentions. A drop of beer and a friendly smite on the shoulder would have got him several votes against the strike. As it was, he had merely strengthened the arms of “that ass Gibbons,” by making the mistake of supposing that the average human being is actuated by reason.
Meanwhile, the young man had passed under the archway and up the court, until he came to doorway No. 3. The hall, and the five pairs of grimy stairs, were only less public than the court, which in its turn was only less public than Light Street, because fewer feet trod thereon. He ascended the first flight of stairs and paused at one of the doors of the landing. From within came the droning notes of a harmonium, and Marsten forebore to knock as he listened to the sound. A slatternly woman came down the second flight with a water-jug in her hand. She stopped, on seeing a stranger standing there, and listened to the music also. The dirge being played did not soothe whatever savageness there was within the breast of the woman, for she broke out against the inmates of the rooms.
“Oh, yes,” she cried. “Fine goin’s on for the likes o’ them. A harmonyum, if you please. Gawd save us! we ain’t good enough for the likes o’ ’im. A harmonyum! In Garden Court! No good can come o’ ’stravagance like that. Wot’s ’e, I’d like to know? Bah!”
The woman, with a wave of her hand, expressed her contempt for such goings on and departed down the stairs with her jug. Her husband spent his spare cash at the “pub,” as a man should, and not in such vanities as a second-hand musical instrument. She had, very properly, no patience with extravagance.
Marsten rapped when the playing ceased, and Joe Braunt himself came to the door.
“Come in, my boy,” he said cordially, and Marsten went in.