ite at Sir Isaac's
disposal."

Lady Harman found herself thrust perforce into the role of her husband's
spokeswoman. She asked Mrs. Pembrose if she knew the exact nature of the
experiment they contemplated.

Mrs. Pembrose hadn't a doubt she knew. Of course for a long time and
more especially in the Metropolis where the distances were so great and
increasing so rapidly, there had been a gathering feeling not only in
the catering trade, but in very many factory industries, against the
daily journey to employment and home again. It was irksome and wasteful
to everyone concerned, there was a great loss in control, later hours of
beginning, uncertain service. "Yes, my husband calculated the hours lost
in London every week, hours that are neither work nor play, mere
tiresome stuffy journeying. It made an enormous sum. It worked out at
hundreds of working lives per week." Sir Isaac's project was to abolish
all that, to bring his staff into line with the drapers and grocers who
kept their assistants on the living-in system....

"I thought people objected to the living-in system," said Mr. Brumley.

"There's an agitation against it on the part of a small Trade Union of
Shop Assistants," said Mrs. Pembrose. "But they have no real alternative
to propose."

"And this isn't Living In," said Mr. Brumley.

"Yes, I think you'll find it is," said Mrs. Pembrose with a nice little
expert smile.

"Living-in isn't _quite_ what we want," said Lady Harman slowly and with
knitted brows, seeking a method of saying just what the difference was
to be.

"Yes, not perhaps in the strictest sense," said Mrs. Pembrose giving her
no chance, and went on to make fine distinctions. Strictly speaking,
living-in meant sleeping over the shop and eating underneath it, and
this hostel idea was an affair of a separate house and of occupants who
would be assistants from a number of shops. "Yes, collectivism, if you
like," said Mrs. Pembrose. But the word collectivism, she assured them,
wouldn't frighten her, she was a collectivist, a socialist, as her
husband had always been. The day was past when socialist could be used
as a term of reproach. "Yes, instead of the individual employer of
labour, we already begin to have the collective employer of labour, with
a labour bureau--and so on. We share them. We no longer compete for
them. It's the keynote of the time."

Mr. Brumley followed this with a lifted eyebrow. He was still new to
these modern develop