Nothing could have been more soothing than such talk to the average employer in search of congenial opinions. But George was not the average employer, and the fastidious element in him began soon to make him uncomfortable. Sobriety is, no doubt, admirable, but he had no sooner detected a teetotal cant in his companion than that particular axiom ceased to matter to him. And to think poorly of Burrows might be a salutary feature in a man's character, but it should be for some respectable reason. George fidgeted on his chair while Macgregor told the usual cock-and-bull stories of monstrous hotel-bills seen sticking out of Burrows's tail-pockets, and there deciphered by a gaping populace; and his mental discomfort reached its climax when Macgregor wound up with the remark: "And _that_, Sir George, is where the money goes to!--not to the poor starving women and children, I can tell yer, whose husbands are keepin him in luxury. I've always said it. _Where's the accounts?_ I've never seen no balance-sheet--_never!_" he repeated solemnly. They do say as there's one to be seen at the 'lodge'--" "Why, of course there is, Macgregor," said George, with a nervous laugh, as he got up to depart; "all the big Unions publish their accounts." The fireman's obstinate mouth and stubbly hair only expressed a more pronounced scepticism. "Well, I shouldn't believe in em," he said, "if they did. I've niver seen a balance-sheet, and I don't suppose I ever shall. Well, good-bye to you, Sir George, and thank you kindly. Yo take my word, sir, if it weren't for the public-house the men could afford to lose a trifle now and again to let the masters make their fair profit!" And he looked behind him complacently at his neat cottage and well-clothed children. But George walked away, impatient. "_His_ wages won't go down, anyway," he said to himself--for the wages of the "firemen," whose work is of the nature of superintendence, hardly vary with the state of trade. "And what suspicious idiocy about the accounts!" His last visit was the least fortunate of any. The fireman in question, Mark Dowse, Macgregor's chief rival in the village, was a keen Radical, and George found him chuckling over his newspaper, and the defeat of the Tory candidate in a recently decided County Council election. He received his visitor with a surprise which George thought not untinged with insolence. Some political talk followed, in which Dowse's Yorkshire wit scored more than once at his employer's expense. Dowse, indeed, let himself go. He was on the point of taking the examination for an under-manager's certificate and leaving the valley. Hence there were no strong reasons for servility, and he might talk as he pleased to a young "swell" who had sold himself to reaction. George lost his temper somewhat, was furiously ashamed of himself, and could only think of getting out of the man's company with dignity.