ve got work again--as a
baker?"

"It's hard after you've had a shop. You see all the younger men've come
on. They know the new ways. And a man who's had a shop and failed, he's
lost heart. And these stores setting up make everything drivinger. They
do things a different way. They make it harder for everyone."

Both Lady Harman and Susan Burnet reflected in silence for a few seconds
upon the International Stores. The sewing woman was the first to speak.

"Things like that," she said, "didn't ought to be. One shop didn't ought
to be allowed to set out to ruin another. It isn't fair trading, it's a
sort of murder. It oughtn't to be allowed. How was father to know?..."

"There's got to be competition," said Lady Harman.

"I don't call that competition," said Susan Burnet.

"But,--I suppose they give people cheaper bread."

"They do for a time. Then when they've killed you they do what they
like.... Luke--he's one of those who'll say anything--well, he used to
say it was a regular Monopoly. But it's hard on people who've set out to
live honest and respectable and bring up a family plain and decent to be
pushed out of the way like that."

"I suppose it is," said Lady Harman.

"What was father to _do_?" said Susan, and turned to Sir Isaac's
armchair from which this discourse had distracted her.

And then suddenly, in a voice thick with rage, she burst out: "And then
Alice must needs go and take their money. That's what sticks in _my_
throat."

Still on her knees she faced about to Lady Harman.

"Alice goes into one of their Ho'burn branches as a waitress, do what I
could to prevent her. It makes one mad to think of it. Time after time
I've said to her, 'Alice,' I've said, 'sooner than touch their dirty
money I'd starve in the street.' And she goes! She says it's all
nonsense of me to bear a spite. Laughs at me! 'Alice,' I told her, 'it's
a wonder the spirit of poor father don't rise up against you.' And she
laughs. Calls that bearing a spite.... Of course she was little when it
happened. She can't remember, not as I remember...."

Lady Harman reflected for a time. "I suppose you don't know," she began,
addressing Susan's industrious back; "you don't know who--who owns these
International Stores?"

"I suppose it's some company," said Susan. "I don't see that it lets
them off--being in a company."

Sec.8

We have done much in the last few years to destroy the severe
limitations of Victorian delicacy, and al