vote_; but I'm not goin' to make him master over
me, and give him the right to speak for my mates in the House of
Commons. I'd cut my hand off fust!"

Leven grinned in the background. Bennett lay back in his chair with a
worried look. Wilkins's crudities were very distasteful to him both in
and out of the House. The younger of the Socialist workmen, a mason,
with a strong square face, incongruously lit somehow with the eyes of
the religious dreamer, looked at Wilkins contemptuously.

"There's none of you in the House will take orders," he said quickly,
"and that's the ruin of us. We all know that. Where do you think we'd
have been in the struggle with the employers, if we'd gone about our
business as you're going about yours in the House of Commons?"

"I'm not saying we shouldn't _organise_," said Wilkins, fiercely. "What
I'm sayin' is, get a man of the working class--a man who has the _wants_
of the working class--a man whom the working class can get a hold on--to
do your business for you, and not any bloodsucking landlord or
capitalist. It's a slap i' the face to ivery honest working man i' the
coontry, to mak' a Labour party and put Harry Wharton at t' head of it!"

The young Socialist looked at him askance. "Of course you'd like it
yourself!" was what he was thinking. "But they'll take a man as can hold
his own with the swells--and quite right too!"

"And if Mr. Wharton _is_ a landlord he's a good sort!" exclaimed the
shoemaker--a tall, lean man in a well-brushed frock coat. "There's many
on us knows as have been to hear him speak, what he's tried to do about
the land, and the co-operative farming. E's _straight_ is Mr. Wharton.
We 'aven't got Socialism yet--an' it isn't 'is fault bein' a landlord.
Ee was born it."

"I tell tha he's playin' for his own hand!" said Wilkins, doggedly, the
red spot deepening on his swarthy cheek--"he's runnin' that paper for
his own hand--Haven't I had experience of him? I know it--And I'll prove
it some day! He's one for featherin' his own nest is Mr. Wharton--and
when he's doon it by makkin' fools of us, he'll leave us to whistle for
any good we're iver likely to get out o' _him. He_ go agen the landlords
when it coom to the real toossle,--I know 'em--I tell tha--I know 'em!"

A woman's voice, clear and scornful, broke into the talk.

"It's a little strange to think, isn't it, that while we in London go on
groaning and moaning about insanitary houses, and making our small
att