‘Oh, a good deal more. To begin with, they’re housed like human beings, and not like animals. Some day you shall see the kind of places the people live in, in London and other big towns. You won’t believe your eyes. Then they have shorter hours of work; they’re not treated like omnibus horses, calculating just how much can be got out of them without killing them before a reasonable time. Then they’re sure of their work as long as they keep honest and don’t break any of our rules; that’s no slight thing, I can tell you. Why, on the ordinary system a man may find himself and his family without food any week end. Then there’s a good school for the children; they pay threepence a week for each child. Then there’s the reading-room and library, and the lectures, and the recreation-grounds. You just come over the place with me some day, and talk with the women, and see if they don’t think they’re well off.’ Adela looked him in the face. ‘And it is you they have to thank for all this?’ ‘Well, I don’t want any credit for it,’ Mutimer replied, waving his hand. ‘What would you think of me if I worked them like niggers and just enjoyed myself on the profits? That’s what the capitalists do.’ ‘I think you are doing more than most men would. There is only one thing.’ She dropped her voice. ‘What’s that, Adela?’ ‘I’ll speak of it some other time.’ ‘I know what you mean. You’re sorry I’ve got no religion. Ay, but I have! There’s my religion, down there in New Wanley. I’m saving men and women and children from hunger and cold and the lives of brute beasts. I teach them to live honestly and soberly. There’s no public-house in New Wanley, and there won’t be.’ (It just flashed across Adela’s mind that Mutimer drank wine himself.) ‘There’s no bad language if I can help it. The children ‘ll be brought up to respect the human nature that’s in them, to honour their parents, and act justly and kindly to all they have dealings with. Isn’t there a good deal of religion in that, Adela?’ ‘Yes, but not all. Not the most important part’ ‘Well, as you say, we’ll talk over that some other time. And now I’m sorry I can’t stay any longer. I’ve twenty or thirty letters to get written before post-time.’ Adela rose as he did. ‘If there’s ever anything I can do to help you,’ she said modestly, ‘you will not fail to ask me?’ ‘That I won’t What I want you to do now is to read what I’ve marked in those books. You mustn’t tire your eyes, you know; there’s plenty of time.’ ‘I will read all you wish me to, and think over it as much as I can.’ ‘Then you’re a right-down good girl, and if I don’t think myself a lucky man, I ought to.’ He left her trembling with a strange new emotion, the begin fling of a self-conscious zeal, an enthusiasm forced into being like a hothouse flower. It made her cheeks burn; she could not rest till her study had commenced.