Page:Robert Barr - Lord Stranleigh Philanthropist.djvu/156

 business, but who speedily found that the business he had learned was not that which he was compelled chiefly to exercise. His principal duty proved to be keeping the men at work, because the moment he disappeared from one side of the building, the amateur horticulturists dropped their spades, filled up clay pipes, and, the better to enjoy their smoke, sat in a row with their backs against the phalanstery, ready to jump up in a hurry when a whistled signal warned them that the gardener was approaching.

Nevertheless, for the first week everything went on with reasonable smoothness, then the result of regular meals and excellent food began to exercise an effect. All hunger-cringing had departed from the men, and Stranleigh, who studied his fellow-workers with unobserved eagerness, regarded this as a good sign. They were standing on their feet, as the poet said, and would soon be ready to play the game. The game, however, developed through three crises; first, the tobacco crisis, then the drink crisis, and lastly the financial crisis.

Although Stranleigh occupied two rooms furnished exactly like all the others, and although he partook of the same food, with people from whom he instinctively shrank, he allowed himself one luxury; several boxes of good cigars that Blake had