"I think," he said, one evening when they were alone except for Nelly in the drawing-room, "I think that we should never think or talk of working-men in the lump, any more than we think of rich men in a lump. All sorts and conditions of men are pretty much alike, and what moves one moves all. We are all tempted in the same way; we can all be led in the same way."
"Yes, but I do not see how that fact helps."
They were talking, as Angela loved to do, of the scheme of the palace.
"If the palace were built, we should offer the people of Stepney, without prejudice to Whitechapel, Mile End Bow, or even Cable Street, a great many things which at present they cannot get and do not desire. Yet they have always proved extremely attractive. We offer the society of the young for the young, with dancing, singing, music, acting, entertainments--everything except, which is an enormous exception, feasting; we offer them all for nothing; we tell them, in fact, to do everything for themselves; to be the actors, singers, dancers, and musicians."
"A few can; the rest will come in. You forget, Miss Kennedy, the honor and glory of acting, singing, and performing in public. Can there be a greater reward than the applause of one's friends?"
"It could never be so nice," said Nelly, "to dance in a great hall among a lot of people as to dance up here, all by ourselves."
The palace was not, in these days, very greatly in the young man's mind. He was occupied with other things: his own work and position; the wisdom of his choice; the prospects of the future. For surely, if he had exchanged the old life and got nothing in return but work at a lathe all day at tenpence an hour, the change was a bad one. Nothing more had been said to him by Miss Kennedy about the great things he was to do, with her, for her, among his people. Was he, then, supposed to find out for himself these great things? And he made no more way with his wooing. That was stopped, apparently, altogether.
Always kind to him; always well pleased to see him; always receiving him with the same sweet and gracious smile; always frank and open with him; but nothing more.
Of late he had observed that her mind was greatly occupied; she was brooding over something; he feared that it might be something to do with the Associated Dressmakers' financial position. She did not communicate her anxieties to him, but always, when they were alone, wanted to go back to their vision of the palace. Harry possessed a ready sympathy; he fell easily and at once into the direction suggested by another's words. Therefore, when Angela talked about the palace, he too took up the thread of invention, and made believe with her as if it were a thing possible, a thing of brick and mortar.