e one of these days, of employers, and then we'll
see a bit," he said. "They'll drive Capital abroad and then they'll
whistle to get it back again."...

He led the way down the shaky wooden steps and cheered up to tell me
of his way of checking his coal consumption. He exchanged a ferocious
greeting with one or two workpeople, and so we came out of the factory
gates into the ugly narrow streets, paved with a peculiarly hard
diapered brick of an unpleasing inky-blue colour, and bordered with the
mean and squalid homes of his workers. Doors stood open and showed grimy
interiors, and dirty ill-clad children played in the kennel.

We passed a sickly-looking girl with a sallow face, who dragged her
limbs and peered at us dimly with painful eyes. She stood back, as
partly blinded people will do, to allow us to pass, although there was
plenty of room for us.

I glanced back at her.

"THAT'S ploombism," said my uncle casually.

"What?" said I.

"Ploombism. And the other day I saw a fool of a girl, and what d'you
think? She'd got a basin that hadn't been fired, a cracked piece of
biscuit it was, up on the shelf over her head, just all over glaze,
killing glaze, man, and she was putting up her hand if you please, and
eating her dinner out of it. Got her dinner in it!

"Eating her dinner out of it," he repeated in loud and bitter tones, and
punched me hard in the ribs.

"And then they comes to THAT--and grumbles. And the fools up in
Westminster want you to put in fans here and fans there--the Longton
fools have.... And then eating their dinners out of it all the time!"...

At high tea that night--my uncle was still holding out against evening
dinner--Sibyl and Gertrude made what was evidently a concerted demand
for a motor-car.

"You've got your mother's brougham," he said, "that's good enough for
you." But he seemed shaken by the fact that some Burslem rival was
launching out with the new invention. "He spoils his girls," he
remarked. "He's a fool," and became thoughtful.

Afterwards he asked me to come to him into his study; it was a room with
a writing-desk and full of pieces of earthenware and suchlike litter,
and we had our great row about Cambridge.

"Have you thought things over, Dick?" he said.

"I think I'll go to Trinity, Uncle," I said firmly. "I want to go to
Trinity. It is a great college."

He was manifestly chagrined. "You're a fool," he said.

I made no answer.

"You're a damned fool," he said.