accustomed to him.

MRS HUSHABYE. Have you no heart? Have you no sense? Look at the brute!
Think of poor weak innocent Ellie in the clutches of this slavedriver,
who spends his life making thousands of rough violent workmen bend to
his will and sweat for him: a man accustomed to have great masses of
iron beaten into shape for him by steam-hammers! to fight with women
and girls over a halfpenny an hour ruthlessly! a captain of industry,
I think you call him, don't you? Are you going to fling your delicate,
sweet, helpless child into such a beast's claws just because he will
keep her in an expensive house and make her wear diamonds to show how
rich he is?

MAZZINI [staring at her in wide-eyed amazement]. Bless you, dear Mrs
Hushabye, what romantic ideas of business you have! Poor dear Mangan
isn't a bit like that.

MRS HUSHABYE [scornfully]. Poor dear Mangan indeed!

MAZZINI. But he doesn't know anything about machinery. He never goes
near the men: he couldn't manage them: he is afraid of them. I never can
get him to take the least interest in the works: he hardly knows more
about them than you do. People are cruelly unjust to Mangan: they think
he is all rugged strength just because his manners are bad.

MRS HUSHABYE. Do you mean to tell me he isn't strong enough to crush
poor little Ellie?

MAZZINI. Of course it's very hard to say how any marriage will turn out;
but speaking for myself, I should say that he won't have a dog's chance
against Ellie. You know, Ellie has remarkable strength of character. I
think it is because I taught her to like Shakespeare when she was very
young.

MRS HUSHABYE [contemptuously]. Shakespeare! The next thing you will tell
me is that you could have made a great deal more money than Mangan. [She
retires to the sofa, and sits down at the port end of it in the worst of
humors].

MAZZINI [following her and taking the other end]. No: I'm no good at
making money. I don't care enough for it, somehow. I'm not ambitious!
that must be it. Mangan is wonderful about money: he thinks of nothing
else. He is so dreadfully afraid of being poor. I am always thinking of
other things: even at the works I think of the things we are doing and
not of what they cost. And the worst of it is, poor Mangan doesn't know
what to do with his money when he gets it. He is such a baby that he
doesn't know even what to eat and drink: he has ruined his liver eating
and drinking the wrong things; and now he can hard