"For your sake then, Dorothy," was all he said.
She placed her hand within his arm, and in a silence that neither cared to break, they turned by mutual impulse to descend the hill homewards.
Tom Pinder lost no time in waiting upon his solicitor and acquainting him with his desire that the proceedings should be stayed even if to stay them meant an ignominious surrender. Mr. Sykes did not conceal his surprise.
"What about the plaintiff's costs?" he asked. Tom said he had reason to hope these would not be insisted on. "It is yours I'm much concerned about."
"As to them, make your mind easy. I shall make out an account of my actual disbursements, and you must pay me off by such instalments as you find convenient."
"But your labour?" protested Tom, "the days of manna are over long ago, and I suppose that if popular opinion were ought to go by lawyers would be the last body of men in the world for whom a special dispensation from the general rule would be made."
"Ah well! popular opinion is sometimes wrong, let us hope, despite the saying, _Vox populi vox Dei_."
"I thought you were a Radical, Mr. Sykes."
"Yes, yes, but I am not so ardent a lover as to be blind to the faults of my mistress. But about this stay of proceedings. I must sound Wimpenny. I'm afraid he'll be for his pound of flesh and all the other blood he can squeeze out of you. He's very sore about that interim injunction and the judge's remarks at the time would scarcely be as balm of Gilead to him."
"I suppose Mr. Wimpenny will take his orders from his client."
"Oh! of course. Well, we shall see what we shall see. That's oracular, if it doesn't convey much information. What about your scheme of Co-operative production on advanced lines? Is that to die an untimely death? It seemed to me a most promising essay in social economics. So long as you were content to work like a slave and be a poor man, with no prospect of being anything but a poor man, the system seemed flawless."
"Systems for the regulation of human affairs will never be flawless, Mr. Sykes, till the men and women who are the flesh and blood of all systems are also flawless. Now I am far from being that."
"I presume not," said the lawyer, with something like a sigh. "I suppose you've got tired of this sacrificial altar and have secured a lucrative berth, and, like all the others, are going to worship the golden calf. _Sic transit gloria mundi_. I shed a tear to the memory of Co-op Mill and all the high resolves it enshrines. Who shall write its cold '_Hic jacet_.'"