The breeze pulled at her scarf, and the newspaper in her hands flapped and struggled like a live thing. She found a seat facing the sea, and sheltered on three sides from the wind by an erection of glass and wood, built for the convenience of summer visitors. There she sat and unfolded the paper.
The Northern Clarion was unfamiliar to her. She missed the genial friendliness with which the Yorkshire Chronicle greeted her each morning. She wrestled with the fluttering pages, turning them over and over to find David's article.
His name suddenly faced her at the head of a column.
"Progress and the Wolds" by David Rossitur. There was a column and a half of little black letters, dancing and wriggling on the paper. If they only would keep still for a minute, she could read what he had to say—what he had the amazing impertinence and ingratitude to say!
She folded the paper and began to read steadily, from the head on one column to its foot, then up again and half-way down the next, and that was all. She lowered her hands, and looked across the sea.
It might have been worse. After all, he really said very little. The tone of the article was more restrained than that of his book. He had begun by drawing a picture of the agricultural conditions, in East Yorkshire—a little exaggerated in outline, of course, but less grossly distorted than she had imagined. The passage about starvation wages was rather bitter, but the reference to education might have applied to anybody—not specially to her. Perhaps Coast had never even mentioned to him the incident of Jack Greenwood.
Perhaps her anger was unjust. David had to do his work after all. Perhaps she had not taken him seriously enough because he was such a boy. He sounded serious enough here. She shifted her position on the seat and turned to Hunting's letter. This surely was "the stinger." Toby had confused the two writers. Hunting declared that he wished to confirm David Rossitur's theories. He denounced the Eastern Farmers in half a column of crude virulence, and finally stated his intention of following up Mr. Rossitur's valuable work by the organization of a union among farm labourers.
Mary frowned.
Was this really what David meant when he spoke of the fellowship and courage necessary for reform? She turned again to the last passage in his article. It contained an appeal to the organizers of more advanced industries to have patience and sympathy with their comrades, the agriculturists. Although the evils of the countrymen were less flagrant and the sufferers less articulate, there was just the same need for encouragement. He warned them against the cowardice of complacency.
"Progress is not the movement towards a single, recognized goal. Because some of you have reached a condition of comparative prosperity, that is no reason why you should now withdraw from the race. It is cowardice to refuse to relinquish present good for the sake of future excellence. 'Felicity is the continual progresse of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still, but the way to the later ... so that, in the first place, I put for a generall inclination of mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of power after power which ceaseth only after death and there shall be no contentment but proceeding.'"