"If you would kindly step within," he said, opening an inner door, "Dr. Ramsay and Mrs. Tresillian, sir." The door closed behind them and--and---- Ned Blackborough jumped up from a comfortable chair by the fire and came forward with outstretched hands. "By George! I was nearly asleep. What a time you've been! I thought you must have gone away disgusted." "My dear Ned!" gasped Mrs. Tresillian, "you don't surely mean that you--you only--are the Governing Body?" "If you will sit down and pour us out some tea," he said coolly, pointing to a little table laid out by the fire, "I will tell you what I am--or rather what I am not--for I have been most things this last month. I had no idea it would have been such a business." He might have said he had had no idea it would cost so much money, but he did not, for to him the only use of money was to spend it. So as they drank their tea, he told them how the idea had come to him before Christmas, when Helen had first told him of No. 36 and the discussion concerning the pot of beer had begun. How he had rushed everybody, bribing everybody to unheard-of haste. Just a month, he said, from start to finish; but he had had to get bricklayers, plasterers, painters over, by wire, from the States, and buy all the fittings in Germany. It was very unpatriotic, of course, but what could one do when the Trades' Unions would only allow a man to lay one-half the number of bricks in a day that the Americans laid, and when English firms talked of Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the general holiday dislocation of trade? He never could have done it but for Woods, the little dumpity who had introduced them. The man was an old watchmaker who had lost employment through the Swiss competition, and who had had the pluck to spend his last pound or two in going over to Geneva to see how it was that the foreigner could work cheaper. He, Ned, had come across him in the park one night and had lent him--only lent him, of course, with no hope of ever seeing him or it again--a sovereign! But the fellow had come back and had repaid the sovereign! He had written a pamphlet on his views and sold it in the streets. So?--so they had joined hands, being of the same way of thinking. "I was awfully afraid when we were down at Plas Afon, Helen," he said, "that the thing would get blown upon; what with all the telegrams and the people who came to see me." "But you told me," she replied reproachfully, "that it was mostly about that strike at the works." "So it was--partly," he answered with a smile. Then he looked grave. "I'll tell you what, I've been busy this last fortnight, and no mistake." "With the strike," she asked quickly.