“You are acting very wrongly,” were Lionel’s first words to them in answer.  “You should blame the meat, not Peckaby.  Is this weather for keeping meat?”

“The weather didn’t get to this heat till yesterday in the afternoon,” said they—­and Lionel could not deny the fact.  Mrs. Dawson took up the word.

“Our meat warn’t bought at Peckaby’s; our meat were got at Clark’s, and it were sweet as a nut.  ’Twere veal, too, and that’s the worst meat for keeping.  Roy ’ud kill us if he could; but he can’t force us on to Peckaby’s rubbish.  We defy him to’t.”

In point of defying Roy, the Dawsons had done that long ago.  There was open warfare between them, and skirmishes took place occasionally.  The first act of Roy, after it was known that Lionel was disinherited, had been to discharge old Dawson and his sons from work.  How they had managed to live since was a mystery; funds did not seem to run low with them; tales of their night-poaching went about, and the sons got an odd job at legitimate work now and then.

“It’s an awful shame,” cried a civil, quiet woman, Sarah Grind, one of a very numerous family, commonly called “Grind’s lot,” “that we should be beat down to have our victuals and other things at such a place as Peckaby’s!  Sometimes, sir, I’m almost inclined to ask, is it Christians as rules over us?”

Lionel felt the shaft levelled at his family, though not personally at himself.

“You are not beaten down to it,” he said.  “Why do you deal at Peckaby’s?  Stay a bit!  I know what you would urge:  that by going elsewhere you would displease Roy.  It seems to me that if you would all go elsewhere, Roy could not prevent it.  Should one of you attempt to go, he might; but he could not prevent it if you all go with one accord.  If Peckaby’s things are bad—­as I believe they are—­why do you buy them?”

“There ain’t a single thing as is good in his place,” spoke up a woman, half-crying.  “Sir, it’s truth.  His flour is half bone-dust, and his ’taturs is watery.  His sugar is sand, and his tea is leaves dried over again, while his eggs is rotten, and his coals is flint.”

“Allowing that, it is no good reason for your smashing his windows,” said Lionel.  “It is utterly impossible that that can be tolerated.”

“Why do he palm his bad things off upon us, then?” retorted the crowd.  “He makes us pay half as much again as we do in the other shops; and when we gets them home, we can’t eat ’em.  Sir, you be Mr. Verner now; you ought to see as we be protected.”

“I am Mr. Verner; but I have no power.  My power has been taken from me, as you know.  Mrs. Verner is—­”

“A murrain light upon her!” scowled a man from the outskirts of the crowd.  “Why do she call herself Mrs. Verner, and stick herself up for missis at Verner’s Pride, if she is to take no notice on us?  Why do she leave us in the hands of Roy, to be—­”