d they both smiled, very content. "They'd look nice if
I took to drink instead of to work, for a change!" he murmured, pausing
to caress his handsome hair.

There was a sharp knock at the door, and into this room also the
watchful Martha entered.

"Here's the _Signal_, sir. The boy's only just brought it."

"Give it to Miss Hilda," said Mr. Orgreave, without glancing up.

"Shall I take the tray away, 'm?" Martha inquired, looking towards the
bed, the supreme centre of domestic order and authority.

"Perhaps Miss Hilda hasn't finished?"

"Oh yes, I have, thanks."

Martha rearranged the vessels and cutlery upon the tray, with quick,
expert movements of the wrists. Her gaze was carefully fixed on the
tray. Endowed though she was with rare privileges, as a faithful
retainer, she would have been shocked and shamed had her gaze,
improperly wandering, encountered the gaze of the master or the guest.
Then she picked up the tray, and, pushing the small table into its
accustomed place with a deft twist of the foot, she sailed erect and
prim out of the room, and the door primly clicked on her neat-girded
waist and flying white ribbons.

"And what am I to do with this _Signal_" Hilda asked, fingering the
white, damp paper.

"I should like you to read us about the strike," said Mrs. Orgreave.
"It's a dreadful thing."

"I should thing it was!" Hilda agreed fervently. "Oh! Do you know, on
the way from Shawport, I saw a procession of the men, and anything more
terrible--"

"It's the children I think of!" said Mrs. Orgreave softly.

"Pity the men don't!" Mr. Orgreave murmured, without raising his head.

"Don't what?" Hilda asked defiantly.

"Think of the children."

Bridling, but silent, Hilda opened the sheet, and searched round and
about its columns with the embarrassed bewilderment of one unaccustomed
to the perusal of newspapers.

"Look on page three--first column," said Mr. Orgreave.

"That's all about racing," said Hilda.

"Oh dear, dear!" from the bed.

"Well, second column."

"The Potters' Strike. The men's leaders," she read the headlines. "There
isn't much of it."

"How beautifully clearly you read!" said Mrs. Orgreave, with mild
enthusiasm, when Hilda had read the meagre half-column.

"Do I?" Hilda flushed.

"Is that all there is about it?"

"Yes. They don't seem to think it's very important that half the people
are starving!" Hilda sneered.

"Whose fault is it if they do starve?" Osmond Orgr