Once more Ellen closed her diary. "Here they are," applied to the doctor and Mrs. Cumberland. They were walking slowly towards the window, conversing calmly on her ailments, and came in. Mrs. Cumberland sat down with her newspaper. As Mr. Seeley took his departure to visit other patients, Arthur Bohun returned. Close upon that, Richard North was shown in. It seemed that Mrs. Cumberland was to have many visitors that morning. That Richard North should find his time hang somewhat on hand, was only natural; he, the hitherto busy man, who had often wished the day's hours doubled, for the work he had to do in it. Richard could afford to make morning calls on his friends now, and he had come strolling to Mrs. Cumberland's. They sat down: Arthur in the remotest chair he could find from Ellen Adair. She had taken up a bit of light work, and her fairy fingers were deftly plying its threads. Richard sat near Ellen, facing Mrs. Cumberland. He could not help thinking how lovely Ellen Adair was: the fact had never struck him more forcibly than to-day. "How is the strike getting on, Richard?" Mrs. Cumberland laid down her newspaper to ask the question. No other theme bore so much present interest in Dallory. From the time that North and Gass first established the works, things had gone on with uninterrupted smoothness, peace and plenty reigning on all sides. No wonder this startling change seemed as a revolution. "It is still going on," replied Richard. "How the men are getting on, I don't like to think about. The wrong way, of course." "Your proposition, to meet them half-way, was rejected, I hear." "It was." "What do they expect to come to?" "To fortune, I suppose," returned Richard. "To refuse work and _not_ expect a fortune, must be rather a mistake. A poor look-out at the best." "But, according to the newspapers, Richard, one-half the working-classes in the country are out on strike. Do you believe it?" "A great number are out. And more are going out daily." "And what is to become of them all?" "I cannot tell you. The question, serious though it is, never appears to occur to the men or their rulers." "The journals say--living so much alone as I do, I have time to read many of them, and I make it my chief recreation--that the work is leaving the country," pursued Mrs. Cumberland. "And so it is. It cannot be otherwise. Take a case of my own as an example. A contract was offered me some days ago, and I could not take it. Literally _could not_, Mrs. Cumberland. My men are out on strike, and likely to be out; I had no means of performing it, and therefore could only reject it. That contract, as I happen to know, has been taken by a firm in Belgium. They have undertaken it at a cheaper rate than I could possibly have done it at the best of times: for labour is cheap there. It is quite true. The work that circumstances compelled me to refuse, has gone over there to be executed, and I and my men are playing in idleness."