But Tom ventured to touch her arm as she made as though to go. "Nay, Miss Dorothy, I would I might say my say--but, perhaps, you don't care to know our plans?"--this wistfully.
"Oh! but indeed I do. Just five minutes then. And indeed it is vastly pleasanter here than indoors. No more romping for me this day," and Dorothy sat down again.
"I said just now I did not mean to be a master, Ben and I are indeed going to add venture to venture. You know something about co-operation?"
"Why, what a question! Of course I do. Doesn't Mr. Thorpe tell us every time he comes to see my aunt that the Co-op's ruining him--and serve him right, Betty says. Aunt says that things at the Co-op are nasty without being cheap, for what they give you in 'divvy'--isn't that the word?--they take out in quality. I hope you're not going to start a Co-op, Tom. I really cannot fancy you in a white apron, simpering over a counter and asking me 'what's the next article, miss?'"
"Then you would give us your custom?" he asked with a smile.
"Oh! Perhaps I might sneak in occasionally for a trifle--for Lucy's sake, you know."
"But you forget, I told you we had taken part of a mill at Hinchliffe Mill. It's there we're going to have _our_ Co-op."
"Isn't it rather out of the way? Fancy, having to send all that way for a pound of candles. Oh! I beg Ben's pardon; there'll be no need of candles with such a luminary as he in the shops. You'll be selling philosophy by the yard and theology by the stone. But seriously, Tom, I don't see what a Co-op has to do with a mill."
"And that's just what I want to speak to you about. You see Ben's a Socialist, and all his life he has been crying out against capitalists and capital. Now he declares I want to turn him into a capitalist for we are to be partners in this venture upon a venture."
Dorothy shook her head. "I'm just as much in the fog now as ever," she said, "I see if I want to know anything about this wonderful new departure I must ask Lucy. Do get on; you and your Co-op that isn't a Co-op after all. But you will not be a very bloated capitalist, will you, Tom?" she concluded mischievously.
"We aren't going to be capitalists at all. I'm just going to start the concern with my bit of a fortune--it doesn't look so much of a fortune as it did, now I know what a little way it will go. But any way Ben and I are going to work in it, side by side with the hands. We are all going to be hands together. Of course, in a sense, there'll be a master; but he will be a master in a different sense from what we're all used to. Every one of us that can do a full man's work is to have an equal share in the profit, always provided he does the work he is capable of. There will be shorter hours and less work for the youngsters. But the share of all will depend on the profits we make, and no one is to have a greater share than another."