"What's it you, Mr. Richard?" cried Mrs. Gass when she entered, and saw him standing near the window of her dining-room. "I wouldn't have stopped out if I'd known you were here. Some of the men have been hearing a bit of my mind," she added, sitting down behind her plants and untying her bonnet-strings. "It's come to pawning the women's best gowns now." "Has it?" replied Richard North, rather abstractedly, as if buried in thought. "Of course it must come to that, sooner or later." "Sooner or later it would come to pawning themselves, if hey could do it," spoke Mrs. Gass. "If this state of things is to last, they'll have nothing else left to pawn." Richard wheeled round and took a chair in front of Mrs. Gass. He had come to make a proposition to her; one he did not quite approve of himself; and for that reason his manner was perhaps a little less ready than usual. Richard North had received from Mrs. Gass, at the time of her late husband's death, full power to act on his own responsibility, just as he had held it from Mr. Gass; but in all weighty matters he had made a point of consulting them: Mr. Gass whilst he lived, Mrs. Gass since then. "It is a question that I have been asking myself a little too often for my own peace--how long this state of things will last, and what will be the end," said Richard in answer to her last words, his low tone almost painfully earnest. "The longer it goes on, the worse it will be; for the men and for ourselves." "That's precisely what I tell 'em," acquiesced Mrs. Gass, tilting her bonnet and fanning her face with her handkerchief. "But I might just as well speak to so many postesses." "Yes; talking will not avail. I have talked to them; and find it only waste of words. If they listen to my arguments and feel inclined to be impressed with them, the influences of the Trades' Union undo it all again. I think we must try something else." "And what's that, Mr. Richard?" "Give way a little." "Give way!" repeated Mrs. Gass, pushing her chair back some inches in her surprise. "What! give 'em what they want?" "Certainly not. That is what we could not do. I said give way a _little_." "Mr. Richard, I never would." "What I thought of proposing is this: To divide the additional wages they are standing out for. That is, offer them half. If they would not return to work on those terms, I should have no hope of them." "And my opinion is, they'd _not_. Mr. Richard, sir, it's them Trade Union people that upholds 'em in their obstinacy. They'll make 'em hold out for the whole demands or none. What do the leaders of the Union care? It don't touch their pockets, or their comforts. So long as their own nests are feathered, the working man's may get as bare as boards. Don't you fancy the rulers 'll let our men give way half. It's only by keeping up agitation that agitators live." "I should like to put it to the test. I have come here to ask you to agree to my doing it."