Page:Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.djvu/182

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists 'Wot's become of the Professor?' asked the man who sat on an upturned pail in the corner, referring to Owen, who had not yet come down from his work.

'P'r'aps 'e's preparing 'is sermon,' remarked Harlow with a laugh.

'We ain't 'ad no lectures from 'im lately, since 'e's been on that room,' observed Easton, ave we?'

'Dam good job too!' exclaimed Sawkins. 'It gives me the pip to 'ear 'im, the same old thing over and over again.'

'Poor ole Frank,' remarked Harlow, e does upset 'isself about things, don't 'e?'

'More fool 'im!' said Bundy, 'I'll take bloody good care I don't go worryin' myself to death like 'e's doin' about such dam rot as that.'

'I do believe that's wot makes 'im look so bad as 'e does,' observed Harlow; 'several times this morning I couldn't help noticing the way 'e kept on coughing.'

'I thought 'e seemed to be a bit better lately,' Philpot observed, 'more cheerful and happier like, and more inclined for a bit of fun.'

E's a funny sort of chap, ain't 'e?' said Bundy. 'One day quite jolly, singing and cracking jokes and tellin' yarns, and the next you can't hardly get a word out of 'im.'

'Bloody rot, I call it,' chimed in the man on the pail. 'Wot the 'ell's the use of the likes of us troublin' our 'ed's about politics?'

'Oh, I don't see that,' replied Harlow. 'We've got votes and we're really the people what control the affairs of the country, so I reckon we ought to take some interest in it; but at the same time I can't see no sense in this 'ere Socialist wangle that Owen's always talkin' about.'

'Nor nobody else neither,' said Crass, with a jeering laugh.

'Even if all the bloody money in the world was divided out equal,' said the man on the pail, profoundly, 'it wouldn't do no good! In six months' time it would be all back in the same 'ands again.'

'Of course,' said everybody.

'But 'e 'ad a cuff the other day about money bein' no good at all,' observed Easton. 'Don't you remember 'e said as money was the principal cause of poverty?'

'So it is the principal cause of poverty,' said Owen, who entered at that moment. 170