John produced his pipe and began to fill it with trembling fingers. "It's all very well for you," he said at last. "I suppose you're right. You always are. But I'm sure I don't know how we're to manage."
She came to his chair and bent over him with a light across. His helplessness and her increasing care for it engendered in her a new tenderness towards him.
"Why John, be a man! We'll be all right. It'll pass. We've only got to have a firm hand. They may not strike at all when it comes to the point. Don't you worry."
She left him and went to the kitchen where her pots and baskets of fruit awaited her.
She was glad that John would be content to stand back in the ensuing crisis. She wanted to face the strikers herself, to hit hard and be hit back again, to have people say worse things to her than she said to herself. Somehow she must end this conspiracy of adulation which led every one about her household to tell her what a wonder she was, when all the time she shrank from the thought of herself in loathing, and would have welcomed chastisement with scorpions.
And yet, if it did stop, if she could not hold her position in the village, how was she to live? What was there to live for?
She banged the great stewing-pan on the stove with unnecessary violence.
The carrier's cart drove up to the door and Violet entered with several parcels and a green baize bag.
"Put the groceries away please, Violet, and get me a towel to wipe my hands. Are those the things from the library?" Mary opened the bag and drew forth two novels and a sheaf of newspapers.
"I can't think why we get these things," she fretted, turning over the pages of the books. "I'm sure I never have any time to read them nowadays. Take them to Mr. Robson."