once, but I was no good at it. I couldn't
'speed' the men. It seemed to me they got a small enough part of what
they earned, no matter how little they worked. Did you ever think, it
takes one of us only about a day to make enough barrels to pay his week's
wages, and that he has to donate the other five days' work for the
privilege of being allowed to live? If I rose I'd be living off those
five days of stolen labor. Somehow I don't fancy doing it. So I do my ten
hours a day, and have evenings and Sundays for the things I like."

"Doesn't Estelle try to spur you on?"

"She used to, but she soon came round to my point of view. She saw what I
meant, and she hasn't, any more than I, the fancy for stealing time from
being somebody, to use it in making fools think and say you're somebody,
when you ain't."

"It'd be a queer world if everybody were like you."

"It'd be a queer world if everybody were like any particular person,"
retorted Lorry.

Arthur's mind continually returned to this story, to revolve it, to
find some new suggestion as to what was stupid or savage or silly in the
present social system, as to what would be the social system of
to-morrow, which is to to-day's as to-day's is to yesterday's; for Lorry
and Dr. Schulze and Madelene and his own awakened mind had lifted him
out of the silly current notion that mankind is never going to grow any
more, but will wear its present suit of social clothes forever, will
always creep and totter and lisp, will never learn to walk and to talk.
He was in the habit of passing Estelle's shop twice each day--early in
the morning, when she was opening, again when the day's business was
over; and he had often fancied he could see in her evening expression
how the tide of trade had gone. Now, he thought he could tell whether it
was to be one of Lorry's evenings or not. He understood why she had so
eagerly taken up Henrietta Hastings's suggestion, made probably with no
idea that anything would come of it--Henrietta was full of schemes,
evolved not for action, but simply to pass the time and to cause talk in
the town. Estelle's shop became to him vastly different from a mere
place for buying and selling; and presently he was looking on the other
side, the human side, of all the shops and businesses and material
activities, great and small. Just as a knowledge of botany makes every
step taken in the country an advance through thronging miracles, so his
new knowledge was transform