insult her. But
Adelle, thanks to her origin, was not easily insulted. She stayed on--to
hear more.

"You've got a big pile of money and that place and lots of servants and
motors and all the rest," the mason went on to explain. "But that's no
reason you should go bossing around my job 'bout what you don't know
nothing. I get my orders from the boss, _my_ boss--see? And I know how
to lay a wall as good as any man--and your damned bushes shouldn't been
there."

"You needn't be insulting," Adelle gasped with an attempt at dignity.

"Insultin'!" the man blazed. "Who's insultin'? It's you who are
insultin' to God's earth--rich folks like you who've got more money that
ain't yours by rights than you know what to do with. You think because
you pay the bill you own the earth and every man on it. But you
don't--not everybody! And the quicker you and your kind learn that the
easier it will be for all of us."

This was what Major Pound meant by "anarchy among the working-classes."
She had often heard him and Nelson Carhart deplore this,--using
interchangeably the two dread terms, "socialism" and "anarchy." Both the
gentlemen were of the opinion that "before we see an end to this spirit
in the working-classes, we shall have bloodshed." But it was the first
time Adelle had met the thing face to face, and it gave her a faint
thrill. She tried to think of some of Major Pound's excellent arguments
directed against the "anarchy" of the laboring-classes.

"You're paid good wages, very high wages," she said after a time,
remembering that that was one of the grievances gentlemen most often
complained of--that laborers were paid altogether too much, thanks to
the unions, so that no profit was left for the men who supplied capital,
and also that they did less work and poorer work than they had once done
when they got only half the wages now paid.

"You think five dollars a day is big money, don't you? It wouldn't go
far to fit _you_ out!" He nodded at Adelle's rich dress. "It would
hardly get you a dinner--wouldn't pay for the booze your husband will
drink to-night."

Adelle winced at this shot, because it was only too evident to the
servants and the men about the place that Archie drank too much at
times. How could she complain of the workingman's drinking and wasting
his money, which was the next argument she remembered from her
neighbors' repertory, when her own husband drank more than was good for
him and many of the men they k