"Why, they say down in the village that you're going to give in—because of Mr. Robson. Rare bad luck it is having a stroke like that just now, and they say he mustn't be excited, but if you pay what they ask, we'll have to give t' same and we can't do it—we can't. We'll have to give up. Just when we're starting."
"Who said that I was going to give in?"
Bert blushed and looked at the floor. "Oh, they say in t' village—of course, we know you've had a bad time—Mr. Robson ill and all. And then you knew that young fellow, Mr. Rossitur. And they say he was all in t' favour of unions like, and perhaps you, being clever, and seeing you understand all these new ideas——" He paused, stumbling and intimidated, the words with which he had been carefully primed before the interview oozing out of his mind like water from a sponge.
"Oh, I see," said Mary slowly. "They say in the village that because I am supposed to be rather better off than the rest of you, having a larger farm, I can afford to play with socialistic ideas and pose as a kind of enlightened high-brow introducing new methods into Anderby. Is that it? And that I choose my friends from among the class that spreads discontent among the labourers because it amuses me. And that I shall make the excuse that my husband isn't well to give way to the first difficulty, no matter what it may cost the rest of you. Is that it, Bert?"
"Why"—he hung his head—"I wouldn't go so far as t' say that."
"That's what you mean, though, isn't it? I've been busy the last ten days. I haven't been much in the village, but Hunting came to see me, here. Would you like to know what I said to him?"
She rose and went to the window and Bert saw her strong profile and tall figure outlined against the sunlit lawn and shrubbery. Very straight and confident she looked—queer, though. Bert felt he was in for it now. You never knew what Mrs. Robson would do next.
She was not looking at Bert but at the roses and hollyhocks along the garden border, as her even voice continued:
"I told him that he was mistaken in thinking that co-operation and public spirit lay among the labourers alone. I told him that up till now the men had had good wages, and that until he came into the village there had been no complaints. I told him that whatever might happen in the towns, here we were friends together, masters and men, that many of the masters had been labourers themselves once, like your father, Bert, and had risen to be foremen and then bought a bit of land on their own. I told him that except on one or two of the larger farms, there was a continual struggle between the smaller men and the land they held, that every extra penny of capital was needed for manure and stock and that to increase the labourers' wages meant to starve the land, and in the end the labourers as well as the farmers lived on what the land produced. Do you understand that far?"
Bert nodded, though he felt that Mrs. Robson was getting rather out of his depth. Still, she seemed to know what she meant and women—even such superior ones as Mrs. Robson—will talk.