“We prefer a short life and a merry one, Mr. Little,” said the father of all file-cutters.

“A life of disease is not a merry one:  slow poisoning is not a pleasant way of living, but a miserable way of dying.  None but the healthy are happy.  Many a Croesus would give half his fortune for a poor man’s stomach; yet you want your cutlers to be sick men all their days, and not gain a shilling by it.  Man alive, I am not trying to lower their wages.”

“Ay, but you are going the way to do it.”

“How do you make that out?”

“The trade is full already; and, if you force the men to live to threescore and ten, you will overcrowd it so, they will come to starvation wages.”

Little was staggered at this thunderbolt of logic, and digested the matter in silence for a moment.  Then he remembered something that had fallen from Dr. Amboyne; and he turned to Grotait.  “What do you say to that, sir? would you grind Death’s scythe for him (at the list price) to thin the labor market?”

Grotait hesitated for once.  In his heart he went with the file-cutter:  but his understanding encumbered him.

“Starvation,” said he, “is as miserable a death as poisoning.  But why make a large question out of a small one, with rushing into generalities?  I really think you might let Mr. Little settle this matter with the individual workmen.  He has got a little factory, and a little crochet; he chooses to lengthen the lives of six file-cutters.  He says to them, ’My money is my own, and I’ll give you so much of it, in return for so much work plus so much washing and other novelties.’  The question is, does his pay cover the new labor of washing, etc., as well as the old?”

“Mr. Grotait, I pay the highest price that is going.”

“In that case, I think the Unions are not bound to recognize the discussion.  Mr. Little, I have some other reasons to lay before my good friend here, and I hope to convince him.  Now, there’s a little party of us going to dine to-morrow at ‘Savage’s Hotel,’ up by the new reservoir; give us the pleasure of your company, will you? and, by that time, perhaps I may have smoothed this little matter for you.”  Little thanked him, accepted the invitation, and left the pair of secretaries together.

When he was gone, Grotait represented that public opinion would go with Little on this question; and the outrages he had sustained would be all ripped up by the Hillsborough Liberal, and the two topics combined in an ugly way; and all for what?—­to thwart a good-hearted young fellow in a philanthropical crotchet, which, after all, did him honor, and would never be imitated by any other master in Hillsborough.  And so, for once, this Machiavel sided with Henry, not from the purest motives, yet, mind you, not without a certain mixture of right feeling and humanity.