irl" is not ready to sail the day after tomorrow, I shall
discharge you.

Aune (with a start): Me! (He laughs.) You are joking, Mr. Bernick.

Bernick: I should not be so sure of that, if I were you.

Aune: Do you mean that you can contemplate discharging me?--Me, whose
father and grandfather worked in your yard all their lives, as I have
done myself--?

Bernick: Who is it that is forcing me to do it?

Aune: You are asking what is impossible, Mr. Bernick.

Bernick: Oh, where there's a will there's a way. Yes or no; give me a
decisive answer, or consider yourself discharged on the spot.

Aune (coming a step nearer to him): Mr. Bernick, have you ever realised
what discharging an old workman means? You think he can look about for
another job? Oh, yes, he can do that; but does that dispose of the
matter? You should just be there once, in the house of a workman who
has been discharged, the evening he comes home bringing all his tools
with him.

Bernick: Do you think I am discharging you with a light heart? Have I
not always been a good master to you?

Aune: So much the worse, Mr. Bernick. Just for that very reason those
at home will not blame you; they will say nothing to me, because they
dare not; but they will look at me when I am not noticing, and think
that I must have deserved it. You see, sir, that is--that is what I
cannot bear. I am a mere nobody, I know; but I have always been
accustomed to stand first in my own home. My humble home is a little
community too, Mr. Bernick--a little community which I have been able
to support and maintain because my wife has believed in me and because
my children have believed in me. And now it is all to fall to pieces.

Bernick: Still, if there is nothing else for it, the lesser must go
down before the greater; the individual must be sacrificed to the
general welfare. I can give you no other answer; and that, and no
other, is the way of the world. You are an obstinate man, Aune! You are
opposing me, not because you cannot do otherwise, but because you will
not exhibit 'the superiority of machinery over manual labour'.

Aune: And you will not be moved, Mr. Bernick, because you know that if
you drive me away you will at all events have given the newspapers
proof of your good will.

Bernick: And suppose that were so? I have told you what it means for
me--either bringing the Press down on my back, or making them
well-disposed to me at a moment when I am working for an object