'I wish the strike had been buried five-fathom deep, I do!' uttered Dunn, with a catching up of the breath that told of the emotion he strove to hide. 'It have been nothing but a curse to us all along. And where's to be the ending?' 'Who brought home all this misery but you?' recommenced Mrs. Dunn. 'Have you done a day's work for weeks and months? No you haven't; you know you haven't! You have just rowed in the same boat with them nasty lazy Unionists, and let the work go a begging.' 'Who edged me on to join the Unionists? who reproached me with being no man, but a sneak, if I went to work and knuckled down to the masters?' demanded Dunn, in his sore vexation. 'It was you! You know it was you! You was fire-hot for the strike: worse than ever the men was.' 'Can we starve?' said Mrs. Dunn, choking with passion. 'Can we drop into our coffins with famine? Be our children to be drove, like Mary Ann----' An interruption--fortunately. Mrs. Cheek came into the room with a burst. She had a tongue also, on occasions. 'Whatever has been going on here this last half hour?' she inquired in a high voice. 'One would think murder was being committed. There's a dozen listeners collected outside your shutters.' 'She's a casting it in my teeth, now, for having joined the strike,' exclaimed Dunn, indicating his wife. 'She! And she was the foremost to edge us all on.' 'Can one clam?' fiercely returned Mrs. Dunn, speaking at her husband, not to him. 'Let him go to work.' 'Don't be a fool, Hannah Dunn,' said Mrs. Cheek. 'I'd stand up for my rights till I dropped: and so must the men. It'll never do to bend to the will of the masters at last. There's enough men turning tail and going back, without the rest doing of it. I should like to see Cheek attempting it: I'd be on to him.' 'Cheek don't want to; he have got no cause to,' said Mrs. Dunn. 'You get the living now, and find him in beer and bacca.' 'I do; and I am proud on it,' was Mrs. Cheek's answer. 'I goes washing, I goes chairing, I goes ironing; nothing comes amiss to me, and I manages to keep the wolf from the door. It isn't my husband that shall bend to the masters. He shall stand up with the Unionists for his rights, or he shall stand up against me.' Having satisfied her curiosity as to the cause of the disturbance, Mrs. Cheek went out as she came, with a burst and a bang, for she had been bent on some hasty errand when arrested by the noise behind the Dunn's closed shutters. What the next proceedings would have been, it is difficult to say, had not another interruption occurred. Mrs. Dunn was putting her entangled hair behind her ears, most probably preparatory to the resuming of the attack on her husband, when the offending Mary Ann entered, attended by Mrs. Quale.