As for Wharton, at the opening of his speech he spoke both awkwardly and flatly; and Marcella had a momentary shock.  He was, as he said, tired, and his wits were not at command.  He began with the general political programme of the party to which—­on its extreme left wing—­he proclaimed himself to belong.  This programme was, of course, by now a newspaper commonplace of the stalest sort.  He himself recited it without enthusiasm, and it was received without a spark, so far as appeared, of interest or agreement.  The minister gave an “hear, hear,” of a loud official sort; the men made no sign.

“They might be a set of Dutch cheeses!” thought Marcella, indignantly, after a while.  “But, after all, why should they care for all this?  I shall have to get up in a minute and stop those children romping.”

But through all this, as it were, Wharton was only waiting for his second wind.  There came a moment when, dropping his quasi-official and high political tone, he said suddenly with another voice and emphasis: 

“Well now, my men, I’ll be bound you’re thinking, ’That’s all pretty enough!—­we haven’t got anything against it—­we dare say it’s all right; but we don’t care a brass ha’porth about any of it!  If that’s all you’d got to say to us, you might have let us bide at home.  We don’t have none too much time to rest our bones a bit by the fire, and talk to the missus and the kids.  Why didn’t you let us alone, instead of bringing us out in the cold?’

“Well, but it isn’t all I’ve got to say—­and you know it—­because I’ve spoken to you before.  What I’ve been talking about is all true, and all important, and you’ll see it some day when you’re fit.  But what can men in your position know about it, or care about it?  What do any of you want, but bread—­”

—­He thundered on the desk—­

“—­a bit of decent comfort—­a bit of freedom—­freedom from tyrants who call themselves your betters!—­a bit of rest in your old age, a home that’s something better than a dog-hole, a wage that’s something better than starvation, an honest share in the wealth you are making every day and every hour for other people to gorge and plunder!”

He stopped a moment to see how that took.  A knot of young men in a corner rattled their sticks vigorously.  The older men had begun at any rate to look at the speaker.  The boys on the back benches instinctively stopped scuffling.

Then he threw himself into a sort of rapid question-and-answer.  What were their wages?—­eleven shillings a week?

“Not they!” cried a man from the middle of the chapel.  “Yer mus’ reckon it wet an’ dry.  I wor turned back two days las’ week, an’ two days this, fower shillin’ lost each week—­that’s what I call skinnin’ ov yer.”