“I can’t stand Rawdon’s much longer,” I said to Parload by way of a flourish.

“There’s hard times coming,” said Parload.

“Next winter.”

“Sooner.  The Americans have been overproducing, and they mean to dump.  The iron trade is going to have convulsions.”

“I don’t care.  Pot-banks are steady.”

“With a corner in borax?  No.  I’ve heard—­”

“What have you heard?”

“Office secrets.  But it’s no secret there’s trouble coming to potters.  There’s been borrowing and speculation.  The masters don’t stick to one business as they used to do.  I can tell that much.  Half the valley may be ‘playing’ before two months are out.”  Parload delivered himself of this unusually long speech in his most pithy and weighty manner.

“Playing” was our local euphemism for a time when there was no work and no money for a man, a time of stagnation and dreary hungry loafing day after day.  Such interludes seemed in those days a necessary consequence of industrial organization.

“You’d better stick to Rawdon’s,” said Parload.

“Ugh,” said I, affecting a noble disgust.

“There’ll be trouble,” said Parload.

“Who cares?” said I.  “Let there be trouble—­the more the better.  This system has got to end, sooner or later.  These capitalists with their speculation and corners and trusts make things go from bad to worse.  Why should I cower in Rawdon’s office, like a frightened dog, while hunger walks the streets?  Hunger is the master revolutionary.  When he comes we ought to turn out and salute him.  Anyway, I’m going to do so now.”

“That’s all very well,” began Parload.

“I’m tired of it,” I said.  “I want to come to grips with all these Rawdons.  I think perhaps if I was hungry and savage I could talk to hungry men—­”

“There’s your mother,” said Parload, in his slow judicial way.

That was a difficulty.

I got over it by a rhetorical turn.  “Why should one sacrifice the future of the world—­why should one even sacrifice one’s own future—­because one’s mother is totally destitute of imagination?”

Section 5

It was late when I parted from Parload and came back to my own home.

Our house stood in a highly respectable little square near the Clayton parish church.  Mr. Gabbitas, the curate of all work, lodged on our ground floor, and upstairs there was an old lady, Miss Holroyd, who painted flowers on china and maintained her blind sister in an adjacent room; my mother and I lived in the basement and slept in the attics.  The front of the house was veiled by a Virginian creeper that defied the Clayton air and clustered in untidy dependent masses over the wooden porch.