Discovering that Eddy had, he shut up sullenly and suspiciously, and ceased to regard him as a friend, so Eddy left him. On the whole, it had not been a cheery evening.
He told Arnold about it when he got home.
“There’s such a frightful lot to be said on both sides,” he added.
Arnold said, “There certainly is. A frightful lot. If one goes down to the Docks any day one may hear a good deal of it being said; only that’s nearly all on one side, and the wrong side.... I loathe the Unions and their whole system; it’s revolting, the whole theory of the thing, quite apart from the bullying and coercion.”
“I should rather like,” said Eddy, “to go down to the Docks to-morrow and hear the men speaking. Will you come?”
“Well, I can’t answer for myself; I may murder someone; but I’ll come if you’ll take the risk of that.”
Eddy hadn’t known before that Arnold, the cynical and negligent, felt so strongly about anything. He was rather interested.
“You’ve got to have Unions, surely you’d admit that,” he argued. This began a discussion too familiar in outline to be retailed; the reasons for Unions and against them are both exceedingly obvious, and may be imagined as given. It lasted them till late at night.
They went down to the Docks next day, about six o’clock in the evening.