"I had been to see old Bessie Hammersley and Mrs. Batchelor," she said, in a tone that tried to be stiff or indifferent. "Bessie begged, as usual." "That was very good of you. Have you been doing visiting, then, during all these days I have been away?" "Yes--a few people." George groaned. "What's the use of it--or of anything? They hate us and we them. This strike begins to eat into my very being. And the men will be beaten soon, and the feeling towards the employers will be worse than ever." "You are sure they will be beaten?" "Before Christmas, anyway. I daresay there will be some bad times first. To think a woman even can't walk these roads without danger of ill-treatment! How is one to have any dealings with the brutes, or any peace with them?" His rage and bitterness made her somehow feel her bruises less. She even looked up in protest. "Well, it was only a boy, and you used to think he wasn't all there." "Oh! all there!" said George, scornfully. "There'd be half of them in Bedlam if one had to make that excuse for them. There isn't a day passes without some devilry against the non-union men somewhere. It was only this morning I heard of two men being driven into a reservoir near Rilston, and stoned in the water." "Perhaps we should do the same," she said unwillingly. "Lean on me more heavily--we shall soon be there. You think we should be brutes too? Probably. We seem to be all brutes for each other--that's the charming way this competitive world is managed. So you have been looking after some of the old people, have you? You must have had a dull time of it this last three weeks--don't think I don't know that!" He spoke with emotion. He thought he felt her grasp waver a little on his arm, but she did not speak. "Suppose--when this business was over--I were to cut the whole concern--let the pits and the house, and go right away? I daresay I could." "Could you?" she said eagerly. "We shouldn't get so much money, you know, as in the best years. But then it would be certain. What would you say to a thousand a year less?" he asked her, trying to speak lightly. "Well, it doesn't seem easy to get on with what we have--even if we had it," she said sharply. He understood the reference to his mother's debts, and was silent. But evidently the recollection, once introduced, generated the usual heat and irritation in her, for, as they neared the front door, she suddenly said, with an acerbity he had not heard for some weeks: "Of course, to have a country house, and not to be able to spend a farthing upon it--to ask your friends, or have anything decent--is enough to make anyone sick of it. And, above all, when we needn't have been here at all this October--" She stopped, shrinking from the rest of the sentence, but not before he had time to think, "She say _that_!--monstrous!" Aloud he coldly replied: "It is difficult to see where I could have been but here, this October."