“Quite so, quite so. But you see the men want only one thing, not several. They are perfectly logical about it--I had a talk with them and they were very much gratified to hear that you were on their side. There will be no trouble with them in future if Sartwell is only reasonable. They look at it like this: they work ten hours a day and get on an average a pound a week--or--ah--something like that--I forget the exact amount, although they had it there in shillings and pence. Now father and Monkton work four or five hours a day--not very hard either--and go to Switzerland in the summer and Algiers in the winter, yet they draw twenty thousand pounds a year each out of the business. This, the men claim, is unjust, and of course I quite agree with them. It’s outrageous, and I said so. Well, the men are prepared to do the most generous things. In order to compromise, they will allow the partners ten times what the real workers get; Monkton and father are each to draw five hundred pounds a year out of the business, and the forty thousand pounds is to be divided among the workers. I thought that it was an exceedingly liberal proposal, and I told them so.” During this able, if mythical, exposition of the workmen’s views, Mrs. Hope gazed at her son with ever-increased amazement. When he had concluded, she was standing up, apparently speechless, with an ominous frown on her brow. Lady Mary looked with timid anxiety from one to the other. There seemed to be a sweet reasonableness in the young man’s argument, and yet something hopelessly wrong about the proposition. “Five hundred pounds a year!--to me!” cried Mrs. Hope, at last. “Well--to father, technically--same thing, of course.” “Five hundred a year! Barnard, if anyone had told me an hour ago that you were a fool I--five hundred a year!--how can people exist on five hundred a year?” Barney looked reproachfully at his mother. He was evidently hurt. “That’s just the way Sartwell talks, and I suppose he thinks I’m a fool, too, merely because I’m trying to understand the labour problem. It seemed to me that if a workman with twelve children to support can live on fifty pounds a year, an elderly pair with but one child, and he about to make a fortune in painting, could get along on ten times that amount.” “Oh, I’ve no patience with you, Barnard.” “And then, Sartwell says, look at the capital invested----” “Certainly. He is perfectly right, and anyone with a grain of sense would see that. There are thousands and thousands expended in the buildings and in the development of the business. The workmen never think of that--nor you either, it appears.” “You see, mater, it’s out of my line. But what Sartwell said about investment made me think----” “Think!” exclaimed his mother, with withering contempt.